YMMV / Kingdom Hearts III

Examples specific to Kingdom Hearts III: Re𝄌Mind should go on its YMMV page.

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A to M

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Just how much of Braig/Xigbar is Luxu really? Is the whole Surfer Dude shtick just an act or a natural evolution of his original personality? Is Luxu trying to emulate the Master of Masters to cope with loneliness, depression, boredom or whatever? Was there ever an actual person called Braig before he got possessed by Luxu? This last one is assuming Luxu is indeed a Body Surfer, since the game doesn't explain what exactly is this whole "vessel hopping" he's been pulling for centuries. Is it a situation similar to how Xehanort's vessels still retain their personalities despite having his heart? In hindsight, this even extends to some of his actions in previous games, like seeing Ventus' face over Xion's in Days. Was this due to his memory of him at Radiant Garden during Birth by Sleep 10 years ago or was it his memory of him as a Dandelion Union Leader during the events of χ [chi] even further back?
  • Donald Duck, to an extent, has been seen as Crazy-Prepared when combining a certain scene from this game, and one of his infamous AI quirks from the rest of the series. People have argued that him refusing to heal Sora was intentional as a way to save up MP in case he were to have to use ZettaFlare, which is a spell that exceeds the most powerful abilities that actual deities possess, and that all that saved MP was just for that one moment.
  • In an early scene in the DLC, Saïx calls out Xigbar for giving Luxord the order to go after the Black Box directly in front of Master Xehanort. When Xigbar shrugs and says the task he gave Luxord will help the Organization in the long run, Saïx looks to Master Xehanort in confusion, only to find him merely smirking at him and basically shrugging and closing his eyes, clearly ordering him to carry on with the discussion. Saïx drops the subject and does so. It’s clear Master Xehanort does know about Xigbar’s directive to Luxord, but even for someone who Luxord said is too obsessed with the Keyblade War to care about it, it’s very hard to get a fix on where Master Xehanort really stands on it, as well as Xigbar’s very clear independent streak. Could Xehanort really not care and think that finding the Black Box is a happy bonus to his goals, and thus why he allows the search for it to continue? Or is there the smallest possibility that he actually was in some sort of league with the Master of Masters and Luxu for whatever their plans with the Box are, even if the latter’s plot to use him as the “scapegoat” worked marvelously well?
  • Terra's heart, as the Dark Figure, only starts to act of its own volition once the Lingering Will is destroyed. Did the Will need to be destroyed to reunite with its heart and bring Terra one step closer to recompletion? In other words, was it needed to give Terra the willpower to finally defy Xehanort and take his body back?
  • Is Xigbar actually trying to serve as a Stealth Mentor to Sora? His character file seems to imply that it's the case, but for what reason?
    Xigbar: How much of my true intent is getting through to you? If it doesn't reach you at all, I've got a problem, but come on, you could at least take some of it to heart. These kids and their heart-guided Keyblades. I've seen more than enough of you go down the path of self-sacrifice and it never ends well.
• Angst? What Angst?: The Hercules world opens with Thebes in flames and fiery meteors raining from the sky as Hades unleashes the Titans to take over Mount Olympus. Then when Sora and company drop in on Herc, they have a calm conversation complete with a couple lighthearted quips, while Thebes continues to burn around them. Hercules' demeanor implies this isn't the first time Hades has done something like this, but you'd think he'd take the attack seriously since there are civilian lives at risk.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Critical Mode fixed some AI, but there's still a few standouts of bosses that should be much harder than they are.
  • Dark Inferno is fairly tame for being the requisite secret boss. Previous bonus bosses in the series have demanded players be at a high level to win, and some of them are challenging even at Level 99. Dark Inferno, however, can be beaten in the Level 40-50 range if you know what you're doing, and can be crushed with the Ultima Weapon, which can deplete two health bars with one combo. Add to that its generic design—basically an Invisible from the first game, but taller and carrying two swords—and it's considered a huge letdown and nowhere near the challenge players have come to expect from the series' secret bosses. To put it one way, there are a number of players who beat him in their first few attempts (or even the first) without realizing it was meant to be a superboss. Justified, as it's actually a Boss in Mook Clothing,^note Jiminy's Journal keeps track of the number of Dark Infernos defeated just like any regular non-boss Heartless and it's referred to as a species rather than a singular boss, and the actual extra bosses are included with the ReMind DLC.
  • The endgame battles against the Seekers of Darkness are embarrassingly easy. Nomura himself expressed the fights were not representative of how powerful they actually are to appeal to casual audiences, and that the bonus battles added in ReMind actually illustrate how they were meant to be and what the Guardians of Light faced off against.
    • The Saïx boss fight is a particular point of being too easy among the Seekers of Darkness. Due to Sora's partners in this fight being both quite aggressive against Saïx and capable of casting healing magic, the battle is heavily tilted towards the player. One person took this to its logical extreme by showing the two allies winning the fight on their own, while Sora stood completely still.
  • Master Xehanort is a little too easy for a final boss, especially considering he's supposed to be THE final boss. His stage is suitably epic and the fight with Armored Xehanort beforehand is grand, but the actual Final Boss is pretty easy. He only has a handful of attacks that are well-telegraphed, so players just need to watch for when he's coming, block/dodge, and then strike back once he finishes his combo. The final segment of the fight forces players into Rage Form, which is powerful enough to obliterate most of his remaining health before he uses his Desperation Attack, which is easy to avoid by just continuously blocking and dodging. Compared to the multi-stage battles of I and II against Ansem and Xemnas, which are Sequential Boss Fights against foes that have massive health bars and an array of powerful attacks, Master Xehanort only has two forms (preceded by a warm-up fight against cloaked shades of the Organization), not much more HP than any other boss, and his attacks are predictable and not overly strong.
• Arc Fatigue: The Organization constantly throwing round after round of Heartless, Nobodies, and Unversed swarms to "test" the Guardians in the Keyblade Graveyard can seem like this. Exasperatedly lampshaded by Lea and Sora, the latter having JUST beaten, against all odds, the mother of all Demon Tides with the help of the deceased Keyblade wielders of the past only moments prior:
  Lea: Just send out the Big Bad!
  Sora: This again!?
• Ass Pull:
  • How exactly certain characters come back have some missing details in their returns; some of them are handwaved, and some are outright ignored. While the narrative is clear on how Roxas got a body once his heart was restored, it doesn't say how he reached the Keyblade Graveyard as quickly as he did — Nomura later gave a Hand Wave that Roxas's connection to Sora was what allowed him to rush towards the Keyblade Graveyard. While Xion's revival is explained in the Secret Reports, how she suddenly regained her memories is not immediately clear, and it's never shown that her heart was released from within Sora to return to her. The Ultimania explains Xion's memories awoke from within Sora after just being provoked enough, and at some point off-screen her heart was removed and sent back to the point in time Xehanort took it from, and her heart within Sora was placed to her new body.
  • Subject X, the experimental girl. Heartless Ansem just kinda casually brings up their existence in one cutscene, treating the character as an essential part of his already decade-old backstory. Then Lea and Isa suddenly start talking as if this character had always been on their minds all the time, which is simply hard to believe due to neither party ever mentioning the character in any prior game.
  • The ending attempts to justify and undo Master Xehanort's Motive Decay, by revealing he really was a Well-Intentioned Extremist obsessed with balance all along, who just resorted to even more extreme methods. He believed that as long as humans who produced too much darkness in their hearts live, the realm of light will never be safe from darkness, and he saw using Kingdom Hearts as the only way to bring about true balance, by wiping out the universe and starting over. However, these revelations conflict with his reports in Birth By Sleep, where it was stated that he considered too much light to be the problem offsetting the balance and had wanted to "tear down this tyranny of light", so him now claiming that he wanted to suppress darkness from damaging the worlds flies in the face of that. This revelation thus comes off as a weak attempt to redeem Master Xehanort and make him sympathetic and misguided. While some of this is due to a mistranslation (the English version has him describe his new world as "pure and bright" when the Japanese wording is closer to "blank canvas") it's hard to take in the face of every game before it.
  • The game completely glosses over why events replayed at the beginning of the Keyblade Graveyard until the Lingering Will's intervention, as if nobody had any memory of dying. Ven, Aqua, Sora and Terranort's reactions are exactly the same as before. Did they go back in time, and if so, why did nobody — even Sora — remember it? It's handwaved by Word of God that Sora using the Power of Waking to chase after the Lich and rescue his friends hearts rewrote reality causing the above mentioned events to never have happened, though this also doesn't explain how Xigbar/Luxu and Lea are seemingly aware enough to pull their own Lampshade Hanging.
• Audience-Alienating Ending: Many fans have been turned-off by the conclusion, with Master Xehanort's death scene (often viewed as unfairly peaceful compared to what his victims endured) and Sora's last-second Heroic Sacrifice being the sorest spots. The ending is also derided for feeling less like an ending with a sequel hook like the first two games were and more like an attempt to set up the next arc with no regard to the one that just ended.
• Badass Decay:
  • King Mickey himself experiences this. In previous installments he was the The Ace among the main cast, capable of taking out two Darksides with a single hit and rescuing Sora from a horde of Nobodies without struggle. In this game he is easily overpowered by a Demon Tower (which are just Shadow Heartless compiled together) and rendered unconscious, gets killed by the Demon Tide without much of a fight, and needs to depend on Stopza magic to take out a swarm of Heartless. Re:Mind fortunately addresses this problem by having Mickey live up to his title as king and Keyblade master by having him single handedly take out all the Replica Xehanorts.
  • Aqua is aware the trope applies to her and is irritated by it, locking herself in a cage with Vanitas before she's fully recovered from her stay in the Realm of Darkness specifically to show Sora that she's still a badass. While it's not quite the beating back down to level 1 that Sora goes through every week, the rest of the game makes it clear that Aqua is nowhere near as strong as she once was.
• Best Boss Ever:
  • The end bosses of Olympus. No, they're not Hades... they're the TITANS - only one of which (The ice titan) was required to fight in previous games. The Rock Titan is a multi-phase fight in which you have to Attack Its Weak Point after knocking it over (just like in the first game). Then, the ice and fire titans are fought at once, culminating with the Wind Titan who alternates between stances and keeps the player on their feet as they retreat. What's more, this is still technically the PROLOGUE.
  • Dark Baymax. While it was spoiled by earlier promotional material that said it would be present. It changes to a sky battle similar to that of the ship in Kingdom Hearts II. For those who had seen Big Hero 6, it was also an emotional battle as you were fighting to free Baymax from the harmful programming. Oh, and you have unlimited healing - you don't have to wait to recover your health.
  • Sköll, the final boss of Arendelle, is one of the highest regarded bosses in the game, and it's not hard to see why: it's a wolf Heartless that strikes a balance of being fun to fight while also being challenging thanks to its aggressive fighting style and pack of smaller wolf Heartless backing it up, and at one point will try to crush the party by dropping the sky on them. But what makes the fight especially fun and memorable is the atmosphere: Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Marshmallow fight it in a frosty, shadowy wasteland set to a somber and dramatic orchestrated piece that gives it an almost apocalyptic feel. It helps that it's the Heartless of Prince Hans.
  • Anti-Aqua is a toned down version of Phantom Aqua from 0.2, making her a Duel Boss who uses darkness-enhanced versions of all of Aqua's signature moves. The music puts it over the top. "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight indeed.
  • For those that didn't find it to be Ending Fatigue, the final Boss Rush against Real Organization XIII. You fight more than one of them at a time; you get different party members for each fight; several of the fights have very satisfying story moments happen during or after them, such as Roxas coming back, or Terra finally fighting off Xehanort's influence; every one of them you defeat gets their own farewell cutscene mid-battle; and it all culminates in fighting Ansem, Xemnas, and Young Xehanort at the same time, with an absolutely incredible medley of their boss themes from previous games. And after all that you still get one final, knock-down, drag-out, multi-stage fight with Xehanort himself.
• Best Level Ever: Quite a few this time around.
  • Olympus is the first time in a Kingdom Hearts game that a Disney world serves as the tutorial level, thrusting Sora, Donald and Goofy right into Hades' newest invasion plot and finally allowing the player to properly explore Hercules' world aside from the Underworld (complete with Herc himself as a party member). The world ends in boss battles against all four Titans marked by spectacular action and grandiose setpieces.
  • The Toy Box is a huge toy store full of varied enemies and interesting set designs, but it's given a high point for its writing, telling an original story involving the Toy Story characters being separated from Andy so the Organization can investigate how toys grow hearts in this world and how those hearts function compared to the real thing. For combining the lore of Kingdom Hearts and Toy Story seamlessly and expanding on themes and character arcs central to both, it's considered a highlight of writing among the franchise's Disney worlds.
  • The Carribean is essentially a mini-Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, giving players a (though small) wide-open world to adventure in, with various islands to explore, a wide-open oceans you can sail around freely engaging in ship-to-ship combat, and said combat is very fun including unique finishers that can wipe out multiple enemy ships at once. The boss of the world lets the Kraken from Dead Man's Chest avert The Unfought, with Sora commanding his own ship to free the Black Pearl from the Kraken, then boarding the Flying Dutchman to face Davy Jones who still has the Kraken to support him.
  • San Fransokyo is a huge chunk of cityscape that Sora can roam around freely, running up and dashing skyscrapers and grinding along railway tracks and highway ramps. It can be explored either in the daylight or at night, and has plenty of Scenery Porn either way. The boss of the area is once again a highlight: Dark Baymax, the original Baymax that the Organization found and reprogrammed, and Sora and the new Baymax face it in a high-flying aerial battle across the city.
    • Additionally, it shows the Big Hero 6 cast doing something a lot of superhero and shounen anime stories do - learning new tricks and adding them to their arsenal.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The "Let It Go" scene in Arendelle, which is inserted wholesale from the source material, is completely divorced from everything around it in part due to any Character Development for Elsa happening offscreen, going from an Inept Mage to borderline The Archmage of ice offscreen on top of everything else, and taking the attention entirely away from the heroes who are just standing back and watching. Sora's reaction at the end really sells it. Doubles as Narm.
  Sora: Wow. I don't know what we just saw, but... wow.
• Breather Boss:
  • The battle in the Keyblade Graveyard against Saïx and Xion. Saïx is more or less the same battle from II and Xion doesn't do much besides copying his moves. The initial difficulty is just moderate at best, but once Roxas joins in and Xion changes sides, it craters into cakewalk territory, due to how hilariously overpowered the former is as a party member. You can easily sit back and let your two party members do all the work in this fight and still win. Case in point.
  • Of the Data Organization XIII Superboss battles, Data Luxord is commonly thought to be the easiest of the lot. This is mainly because his fight is a gimmick fight like in Kingdom Hearts II, where he doesn't have an obscene amount of HP and focuses more on challenging Sora to minigames. While he does sport far more brutal attacks and speed like the other Data bosses, the fact that you don't insomuch fight him as win his card games to defeat him makes him much easier to deal with than everyone else.
  • Besides Luxord, Data Young Xehanort is considered to be the easiest in the game. This is primarily due to the fact that all his attacks have strict and predictable patterns, not to mention that all but one of his attacks can be blocked. Even his Desperation move is easily countered through a well-timed reprisal that for some reason, immediately ends it.
• Broken Base:
  • The game's initial release was met with a divided house. On the defenders' side, people rejoiced at a worthy conclusion of the Xehanort Saga, and defend Re:Mind as Nomura addressing many of the complaints players had with the game. Detractors however say the game is hap-hazardly made at the very least, with the game's pacing all over the place, a story that creates even more questions than it answers, gives extremely high star power to Sora at the expense of nearly everyone else and can't even bother to make a satisfying end to his story, and marks Nomura's departure from the franchise's original premise of mixing Final Fantasy and Disney characters, effectively betraying its essence.
  • Re:Mind is equally divisive, especially due to the nature of the DLC. Defenders applaud that Nomura addressed player complaints over the story and gameplay, giving Kairi and Roxas a much-needed focus, with a camp also squeeing over Nomura basically bringing Final Fantasy Versus XIII to life in his own way. Detractors already felt like it was too little, too late to save the base game (and even pointed out how the Final Fantasy character cameos felt like a lazy cop-out).
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After he's been a Smug Snake the entire World, seeing Young Xehanort get his smug smile wiped off his face for even a moment and being verbally ripped to shreds by Woody is very cathartic.
  • After multiple games having to deal with Xehanort constantly up staging the heroes and sporting his traditional Smug Snake grin, Sora and his friends begin to give him the wrecking of a lifetime and finally defeat him, even still after he's proclaimed he's won as he's opened Kingdom Hearts. To say this was cathartic would be an understatement.
    • Special mention goes to Terra-Xehanort's defeat. For nine years players have watched Xehanort successfully commit Grand Theft Me on Terra and effectively winning, with the latter never able to recover his body. Seeing Terra, as the Guardian, grab Xehanort's face and then finally reclaim his body with Sora's help, killing this incarnation of Xehanort entirely and finally ending the long nightmare, and reuniting with his best friends.
  • When it's revealed that Xigbar is none other than Luxu, who created and gave Master Xehanort his Keyblade, this means that Xigbar, the same character who was kissing up to Xehanort, was playing him like a damn fiddle.
  • The boss battle with Saïx, with Roxas and Xion as your party members. The series completely avoids its usual Artificial Stupidity here, Roxas and Xion are very aggressive and very powerful, especially Roxas, so players can stand back and let the two of them beat the crap out of Saïx on their own, and they'll win. For fans of Days who saw how Saïx treated the two of them, this is very satisfying to watch, although these feelings are mitigated once you have the information that Saïx wanted this outcome and even helped Roxas and Xion return as means of atonement.
  • Fighting and destroying Mother Gothel's Heartless, with a design and moveset that reflects every despicable quality of her's, outside the tower she imprisoned and abused Rapunzel in for years, is a true joy for fans of the movie.
  • Players exasperated by the vanilla game saddling Kairi with the Faux Action Girl status and her getting Stuffed In A Fridge by Master Xehanort—and the series as a whole making little use of her—can enjoy some sweet vengeance in ReMind when given the option to fight and defeat Armored Xehanort as Kairi, playable for the first time ever.
• Character Rerailment:
  • Sora is more in-line with his previous characterization from the first two main games after Dream Drop Distance dumbed him down into an Idiot Hero rather than his previous characterization as a normal teenager with attitude who knows when to have fun, but can also take things seriously when needed. Dream Drop Distance previously took away these traits for unknown reasons, leaving a pretty bland characterization for Sora than was there previously. Haley Joel Osment's voice for him has also been fixed, being made artificially higher on the level of Kingdom Hearts II when in previous games it has sounded deep to a distracting level.
  • After being played as more of a Card-Carrying Villain in Dream Drop Distance, Ansem SoD has returned to being the somewhat misguided scientist whose experiments while amoral were still done in the name of actual scientific curiosity which led him to to conclude that all beings originate from darkness, which is the source of all power and knowledge without retconning his newfound antagonistic relationships with Sora and Riku.
  • Kairi in the ReMind DLC scenario recovers the fire within her that many felt was sorely missing from the original scenario of the game.
• Crack Pairing: This game has caused a portion of the fandom to ship Yozora and Sora together in a romantic sense, as YoSora.
• Come for the Game, Stay for the Mods: The PC port resulted in a surprisingly robust modding scene. Many mods aim to fix issues that fans have with the combat and UI, although other popular mods include making the Kingdom Hearts III: Re𝄌Mind characters playable outside of their specific boss battles, making bosses playable, or customizing the appearances of Sora and bosses to reimagine fights from previous and other games.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Many people believe, joking or otherwise, that the game has been in Development Hell since 2007. That's not the case; there was never any evidence of it being in development at all until it was announced in 2013. (Which Nomura even admitted was too soon)
    • Many also chalked up a lot of the "Development Hell" or "Troubled Production" aspects as Nomura being incompetent. Except Square-Enix made them scrap a lot of their work to use the Unreal Engine 4, Pixar took their time responding, and Disney had some pretty strict rules as to how their characters could be portrayed.
  • Also, many people say that the game has been delayed numerous times. This is also not true, as an actual release window for the game wasn't announced until 2017, and has since only been delayed once by a single month from that original release window. It was announced in 2013, and a few "updates" were occasionally shown at trade shows, but actual release dates or even windows weren't committed to print until 2017. (And even Nomura has admitted that the initial reveal was far too early and contributed to feelings of the game being "delayed".)
  • A small one, but in 2016, it seemed that the port to the Xbox One had been cancelled in Japan, causing some people to believe it had been cancelled everywhere as well. Thankfully, this isn't the case and the listing was put back on the Japanese Xbox site. However, even after this was discovered and the game was edging closer to release on both platforms, some people were still insistent on the port being cancelled.
  • The scene where Sora and Kairi share the paopu fruit is widely considered to mark their Relationship Upgrade and signify the two becoming the Official Couple. Except Sora’s original Japanese voice actor Miyu Irino indicated in a post-release interview from the Ultimania that sharing the fruit was not indicative of romance. Irino also indicated in the same interview that the developers had made an alternate scene where Sora and Kairi didn’t share the paopu fruit, and that Testsuya Nomura had gone back and forth over which version to use out of concern for how audiences would interpret it. Additionally, the in-universe social media posts used on the loading screens for the Re𝄌Mind DLC show that Sora and Kairi had completely opposite interpretations of what the scene was supposed to mean, with Kairi viewing it as a way to guarantee that they physically remain together, while Sora sees it as a promise that their friendship will endure even when they aren’t in the same place.
  • The lack of official Final Fantasy characters (until the DLC), while accurate, was often responded to by suggestions that Kingdom Hearts III had decided to remove the "Final Fantasy component" from the game, up until now an important part of the whole series. In actuality, the Final Fantasy cast hadn't made a major appearance since II; BBS had all characters besides Zack cut for the same reasons as III (too many other characters and subplots), and DDD used The World Ends with You characters instead. This was regardless treated by many who hadn't kept up with the series as a new development for III.
  • When Phil was silent and Eeyore was missing from the game, fans began believing it was due to their Japanese actors passing away. This has never been explicitly confirmed; while Phil's silence is still a bit odd even though the game shifts the focus away from the coliseum, Eeyore is also not the only character missing from Hundred-Acre-Wood.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Wheel of Fate is one of the most popular melee-oriented Keyblades due to the versatility and power of its Formchanges. Wheel of Fate essentially gives Sora a spear armed with extensive strength, range, and speed, able to rack up damage on foes (especially bosses) extremely fast while being safer to use compared to most weapons.
  • Ever After is also quite popular due to being a Game-Breaker. Its abilities are absurdly strong by the time it's obtained, and it also comes pre-installed with Leaf Bracer, which is very handy.
  • Favorite Deputy is also a common weapon of choice because it comes equipped with a lucky strike ability to assist in synthesis farming.
  • The Kingdom Key is a very popular Keyblade in this title due to the ability to upgrade its stats via the Keyblade Forge, thus making it useful throughout the entire game for the first time in a numbered entry, and the fact that the "Second Form" transformation it comes with gives players access to many popular finishing moves from past games such as Sonic Blade and Ars Arcanum.
• Contested Sequel: This game is one compared to Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II. Many fans still don't consider the game to be an Even Better Sequel, primarily due to the easier difficulty with no Critical Mode at launch, a highly divisive combat system whom comparisons with II frequently devolve into insults, no Final Fantasy characters until the DLC (even then, they only show up for two scenes), less worlds than the first game, lack of battles against Disney Villains with most of the bosses of the worlds being giant Heartless, lack of post-game content (Before DLC), lack of a proper midgame like the second visits to Traverse Town and Hollow Bastion which makes the game feel less evenly paced, and the overall quality of the writing. Some people were also not too keen with the implementation of Kingdom Hearts χ content in III due to the relative obscurity of the mobile game and its microtransaction-heavy nature, and also felt like this meant the game spent too much time promoting the next big saga of the series instead of bringing a satisfying close to the saga at hand. The Re:Mind DLC addressed some of these issues and added a very wide variety of superbosses, but even then the game's ranking in the series is still highly disputed.
• Continuity Lock-Out:
  • While this is nothing unusual for the series, it's a particular problem for this game because a lot of plot elements reference Kingdom Hearts χ, a mobile/browser game. It's plausible that someone who is otherwise a fan of the series hasn't played the game and has only a passing knowledge of it thanks to the cinematic movie in Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8: Final Chapter Prologue, and they'll be completely lost on numerous plot points.
  • Some of the adapted plots of the Disney worlds very much seem to assume the player has seen the corresponding films and expect them to simply fill in the blanks. The Caribbean world is pretty nasty about this, with many crucial plot points from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (a movie that is already somewhat notorious for involving a confusing Gambit Pileup) simply taking place off-screen. Among other things, the crew of the Black Pearl is captured by Jones and Beckett off-screen, Will strikes a deal with Beckett off-screen, Elizabeth is elected Pirate King off-screen, and most bafflingly, Tia Dalma/Calypso is released from her human form off-screen.
  • The Kingdom of Corona also suffers from this, although a bit less so than the above entry. There are a few different aspects of the movie Tangled that players who haven't seen the film probably won't understand due to not being explained in game. First, is the healing properties of Rapunzel's hair, which isn't mentioned once until the very end of the level when she needs to heal Flynn's stab wound. Second is the reveal of Flynn's real name, which might confuse some players when Rapunzel suddenly starts calling him Eugene out of nowhere.
  • Arendelle is by far the worst offender. Pretty much 2/3 of Frozen's plot has been cut from the game. Key backstory events and motivations are simply glossed over—why did Elsa shut Anna out in their childhood? Why is Anna excited for Elsa's coronation? What are they fighting about? Why is Elsa so intent on isolating herself, and why did she run into the wilderness? Hans in particular simply shows up out of nowhere near the end to kidnap Elsa and try to kill her without the game explaining who he is or what his motives are.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Gigas mech suits in Toy Box. They're huge mechanical toys that bombard your party with lasers, bombs, and tackles, and each one is a damage sponge of the first order. The mechs can show up in groups of as many as five, where just surviving is a struggle as the party gets blasted from every angle with heavy-hitting, hard-to-dodge area attacks. The good news is that Sora can commandeer one after it's been defeated to take control of it, which quickly helps turn the tide in your party's favor. The bad news is that, if the game doesn't generously give you an empty one to start a battle, it's going to be a world of hurt before you can take one down.
  • The Spiked Turtletoads, the octopus Unversed in Monstropolis. If you don't have your guard up, these enemies will shred HP like nothing else in the world as they capture the NPC party members in their swings. Not only do they have a lot of multi-hit attacks, they can't be damaged from the front. This makes a very powerful enemy with great defense, which is a real migraine. While they typically only show up one at a time, one is all it takes to make any fight in Monstropolis much harder.
  • Anchor Raiders, the pirate Heartless that swing from anchors in the Caribbean. They're nimble, they can take some punishment and they can hit reasonably hard. Magic does run out after a while so you'll have to get close to them at some point.
  • In lower difficulties, using magic against the various elemental Core Heartless is a polite suggestion but is otherwise not required. In Critical Mode, the Cores' stronger abilities, which tend to render them invulnerable, make the appropriate counter-spell necessary to avoid death.
  • The Parasol Beauty heartless. As a solo encounter, they aren't particularly bad, and would normally fall under mild Goddamned Bats territory. What pushes them into being this trope is the fact that they almost always spawn in large numbers. Their laser attacks have an extremely long range, and the fact that you'll more than likely end up getting hit by two or more at a time means that they can take you from a full health bar down to critical in a matter of seconds. They’ve also got a second rapid-fire laser attack with a similarly long range that, in larger numbers, can damn near turn this standard fare action RPG into a Bullet Hell game, easily Sonny Corleone-ing the hell out of you if you're not careful. On top of all that they have a surprising amount of health, with nearly as much as a Large Body, so it can take just long enough to dispose of one for the others to take aim.
• Designated Monkey:
  • Sora in this game. He spends most of the game stripped of most of his power after Xehanort attempted to make him his final vessel for his new Organization. And he spends most of the game being teased by everyone for his shortcomings as a Keyblade wielder because he failed the Mark of Mastery exam, especially from Donald and Goofy as they state "He can't be a full pint without them," forgetting that Sora has managed to be a strong Keyblade wielder even when no one was there by his side in battle, and he only failed the exam because Xehanort hijacked it. Also, the fact that everyone who was targeted by Xehanort and his Organization in the past have ended up as victims to his plans just like Sora did, making their situations no different from Sora, and making them all come off as hypocrites. Along with later on as Sora breaks down in tears as the Guardians of Light get swallowed by the darkness, stating to Riku that he's worthless without his friends there fighting with him, as if all that teasing he experienced had finally made him crack. All this together makes the treatment Sora gets in this game very needlessly mean-spirited. The irony is that players with enough skill can have Sora beat the game on level 1, showing that even though Sora is stripped of his powers, he is still far from useless.
  • Kairi too, perhaps even moreso than Sora. After all the terrible things that happened to both her and her friends in the previous games, all she wanted was to become stronger to help her friends in their time of need and to prove herself. She spends almost the entire game training to become stronger to help Sora...only to get killed at the Keyblade Graveyard along with the rest of her friends by the Heartless tornado. Luckily, she uses her power to help Sora rescue the Guardians Of Light, thus bringing them all back to life, including herself...but then, she gets kidnapped and killed again by the Xehanorts to “motivate” Sora. Sora at least had the entire game to prove how awesome he was by kicking heartless ass wherever he went to make up for all the crap he went through. Kairi, on the other hand, not so much. She only briefly participates in the Keyblade War and she doesn’t get a chance at the spotlight until the ReMind DLC and even then, it’s only for one battle. And then, at the end of the game, to make it all worse, she has to watch as one of her best friends (and possible love interest) sacrifices his own life for her sake. The universe is ''not'' kind to that poor girl.
• Ending Fatigue: The finale goes on even longer than II, and even for being a Grand Finale to the Xehanort saga of the series, it can take hours to play through. You reach the Keyblade Graveyard for the final showdown, fight a massive horde of enemies...and then everyone dies. You then have to play through a sequence where Sora reforms his body, and fight a series of minibosses to revive the others. After this, you're back in the Keyblade Graveyard, face another massive horde of enemies, and then you're tossed into a labyrinth where you face a Boss Rush from Organization XIII. But even once they're all dead, you don't get to face Master Xehanort yet; in the final world, Scala ad Caelum, you take on manifestations of the Organization XIII members you just defeated, and then finally you fight Master Xehanort, who has two forms. The long gameplay sequences are not helped by numerous long cutscenes between them, several of which afflict the heroes with Cutscene Incompetence for the purposes of making their fight seem more hopeless and Xehanort look more powerful.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The entirety of Verum Rex has gotten this treatment, with many fans wishing it was actually a real video game due to some not-so-subtle similarities to Final Fantasy Versus XIII, the game that would eventually be relabeled as Final Fantasy XV. The fact that the Secret Ending shows that Verum Rex might be Real After All was another large boost to its popularity.
  • Out of all the temporary party members, Woody and Sulley have become fan favorites due to their moments of badassery against Organization XIII. Woody verbally flays Young Xehanort alive, and Sulley saves Sora from Vanitas by sneak attacking him and resorting to hilarious levels of overkill to make sure he's banished from Monstropolis by throwing him into one door, then another door, then another door before feeding that door through a woodchipper.
  • Among the Heartless, Sköll proved to be a fan favorite at launch thanks to his badass design, fun boss fight, and the fact that he's a rare Heartless of a Disney villain. Even people who loathed Arendelle as a world felt that it was worth playing through just to fight him. He's since become more divisive, however, as players who focus more on gameplay than story and presentation have become more critical of the actual fight over time, with Sköll becoming one of that group's least favorite bosses in the game.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • This one-second shot of an unidentified person in a black coat in the Big Hero 6 world trailer set the fanbase ablaze trying to guess the member's identity. Most of the fanbase jumped to the conclusion that it was Xion after having been forced into the new Organization XIII, while others thought it was Aqua or Young Xehanort instead. Some have also said it could have been a version of Riku. An extended variant of the trailer reveals that the last of these guesses was the case.
  • In 2016, Anika Noni Rose posted on her Twitter and Instagram of her in a recording booth, saying that she was reprising her role as Tiana for an upcoming Disney video game. She also clarified that it wasn't for Disney Infinity (which was in the middle of producing the cancelled 4.0 edition at the time). This has led to suspicion that The Princess and the Frog content will be in Kingdom Hearts III. This ended up being jossed, though this raises the question of what she was recording for then. One must wonder if she was being cheeky about Tiana appearing in Ralph Breaks the Internet).
  • Keith David voicing over for one of the trailers has similarly led to suspicion that Square Enix got a hold of him because they had already gotten him to reprise his role as Dr. Facilier (or, Goliath, to a lesser extent). After the final trailer released showing a glimpse of Apollo in Olympus, some fans also wondered if perhaps David was reprising that role. Jossed, but that doesn't put it out of the question for future games.
  • The Winnie the Pooh trailer gives a full shot of the 13 Seekers of Darkness. Fans speculate the female members, minus Larxene who was already revealed, are either Aqua, Xion, Naminé, or even the Foretellers. It was Xion.
  • In the game's opening, and in a new scene added in Re:Mind where Young Xehanort talks to the Master of Masters in a flashback, show him with silver eyes, instead of the Supernatural Gold Eyes he usually has. Because yellow/orange eyes are almost universally used to show one's corruption to darkness, and Xehanort's yellow eyes in particular are used to show he has influence over someone, this has caused a lot of speculation as to what his change in eye color means, particularly when his corruption to darkness occurred and if it happened willingly or if someone forced it upon him.
  • The identity of Subject X, an amnesiac girl from the Age of Fairy Tales who can’t remember anything besides her four friends, a "key", and the phrase, “May your heart be your guiding key.”, and was since abducted by an unknown assailant (implied to be Xigbar as a part of his mission as Luxu). The most popular guesses are that she's either Ava or Skuld.
  • Going hand-in-hand with the above, the identity of the "Nameless Star" Sora speaks to in the Final World. It's implied she knows one of the characters featured in the series, but the audience is never told. The popular theories argue that she is either Subject X or Strelitzia.
    • The secret episode of ReMind implies she might be the Stella-expy from Verum Rex.
  • The Secret Movie. Sora and Riku end up in Shibuya and Shinjuku, where The World Ends with You and Verum Rex — which turns out to be Real All Along with the appearance of Yozora — respectively take place. What does that mean for future appearances from Final Fantasy (particularly, Final Fantasy XV), what role will Yozora and Verum Rex play in the story of Kingdom Hearts, why is the mysterious black-hooded figure (who is highly believed to be the Master of Masters) here, and why did Sora and Riku end up here? Having played The World Ends With You: Final Remix brings Shinjuku's presence into an even more ominous light, and raises the specter of possibility that TWEWY's long-awaited sequel and the next instalment of Kingdom Hearts may, in fact, be one and the same.
  • In an attempt to explain the more Mind Screwy elements of the plot, one group of fans compiled a 350-page document detailing their theory that the vast majority of the game — specifically, the events up until Sora saves everyone in The Final World and undoes their fall at the Keyblade Graveyard — are part of a "Groundhog Day" Loop as Sora attempts to change the outcome a failed timeline that the audience does not see, similar to how Kingdom Hearts Unchained χ [chi] retells the events of Kingdom Hearts χ [chi] up until just before the Keyblade War, then has the player character keep going like the war never happened.
    • While popular in some corners of the fanbase, vocal segments of the wider fandom have and continue to aggressively hate on the theory, its creators, and its supporters due to a variety of misconceptions about the document and its contents, from the idea that the document claims that KH3’s plot is All Just a Dream due the use of lore and mechanics from the Sleeping Worlds to explain how the loop is happening (an idea which the document explicitly rejects) to the belief that the document is an attempt to prove that Soriku is canon (the document uses love in the context of their bond but explicitly tells readers that it's up to their own interpretations whether that love is platonic, familial, or romantic)
    • Many detractors insist that the theory has been Jossed by the ReMind DLC and an interview in the Ultimania where Nomura explains what happened when Sora rewound time in the Keyblade Graveyard. However, neither source contradicts the core ideas of the document, and many fans of the theory believe that since Sora has shown signs of forgetting the previous loops in both the game and DLC, confirmation of the theory is being held back for a future game to allow time to build up to a more dramatic and emotional reveal.
  • A developing fan theory is that Demyx is the Master of Masters in the same vein that Xigbar is Luxu. Possible clues include their similar attitudes and mannerisms, Demyx possibly Obfusicating Stupidity, his enigmatic past of being a Keyblade wielder, and Demyx dropping out of the story entirely after helping Ienzo and not appearing in the epilogue.
  • One theory to tie Superboss Dark Inferno to the main story is that it is the Heartless of Ephemer, mostly due to sharing a Scarf of Asskicking that no other Heartless has. ReMind stoked the fires of this theory even further, as the player fights a Palette Swap of Dark Inferno called "Dark Inferno χ" at the start of the DLC.
  • The suspiciously-high number of Final Fantasy Versus XIII references in the game have given birth to the idea that Nomura may be attempting to bring back material from his old project into the Kingdom Hearts universe.
  • A popular fan theory regarding Disney's Executive Meddling with the Arendelle level is that the Final Boss was originally going to be an "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight with Elsa as she struggled with her inner darkness. In particular, MatPat of Game Theory has advanced this idea and pointed out a great deal of evidence from the game supporting it, such as Larxene's dialogue and some odd level design choices.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Riku Lucis Caelum has been thrown around due to the similarities Riku's new design has with Noctis.
  • Unlimited (key)Blade Works for the Ultima Weapon's Formchange, Ultimate Form, since it involves him summoning infinite Keyblades.
  • "The Battle of 10,000 Heartless" for the battle against a massive swarm of enemies in the Keyblade Graveyard, to parallel the Battle of 1,000 Heartless in Kingdom Hearts II. This is a misnomer, though, since the battle contains Unversed and Nobodies as well.
  • The penultimate boss fight, the triple battle against Young Xehanort, Ansem, and Xemnas, is sometimes referred to as "The 'Nort Court".
  • Since the game's official soundtrack was not released until late 2020, almost two years after release, nicknames were particularly prevalent during the lengthy period before the reveal of each track's name.
    • "Oscurita di Xehanort" for the aforementioned penultimate boss fight, later revealed to be called "Forza Finale".
    • "The Key to All" for the Final Boss theme, officially titled "Dark Domination".
    • "Cercatori Del Buio" or "Cercatori di Oscurita" for the first phase of the final boss fight, officially titled "Replicas".
    • “A Glimmer Atop 104” or simply "Yozora" for the True Final Boss in ReMind, officially titled "Nachtflügel".
  • "Kingstagram" or "Heartstagram" for the in-game Instagram-like social media.
  • Some fans have taken to calling the Nameless Star "Stella" or "Hoshi" for her star motif and being the Stella Nox Fleuret to the Versus XIII parallels seen in Verum Rex.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Not too widespread, but some fans choose to ignore a certain twist toward the end of the game due to those fans thinking that the original implication was cooler. The twist being that Dark Riku was actually the Riku Replica, rather than Riku himself from Kingdom Hearts I. Dark Riku is treated as the real Riku from the past throughout the game by Goofy, present Riku, and even Dark Riku himself up until his defeat, when he starts stammering about wanting to be real in his dying words and then present Riku Replica confirming it. The reason for this preference is that there are already three Xehanorts from Chain of Memories without him (even if one of the three, Vexen, was benched) while without Dark Riku, there is only one from Kingdom Hearts I (Ansem). Dark Riku makes I a little more represented among the villains. Plus it's more interesting to see Riku literally fight his past mistakes rather than fight an old villain he already beat twice before (and who technically has never met him yet from that villain's perspective). The only point in Riku Replica's favor is that his sacrifice for Naminé was touching, but this sacrifice still could have happened almost exactly the same way even if it was the against the original Riku’s past self rather than his own.
• Fountain of Memes: Data Dark Riku, whose battle is so fast paced and chaotic even by the standards of KH superbosses that nearly every one of Dark Riku's battle quotes shot up in quotability:
  I'll show you how powerful I am!
  One more!
  You like it?
  I'm unstoppable!
  Come on, Sora. I thought you were stronger than that.
• Fandom Rivalry: Since the release of the Re:Mind DLC, defenders of Hajime Tabata's Final Fantasy XV did not take well to what KHIII's defenders see as Nomura's version of Final Fantasy Versus XIII, often considering it Nomura's personal temper tantrum. Quite a few people just ask why Square Enix didn't outright fire Nomura like they did with Tabata when FFXV failed to make the waves the company wanted.
• Franchise Original Sin: Like many of the Disney worlds in Kingdom Hearts I and II, the Kingdom of Corona, Arendelle, and Caribbean more or less retell the storylines of the films they are adapted from. While some fans have criticized this as a massive point against the game, other are quick to point that previous games were also guilty of this and even argue that they were worse in that regard since the lack of a beefier budget made the retellings in those games more awkward.
• Fridge Brilliance: Jack Sparrow doesn't enter the water when Sora, Donald, and Goofy do in The Caribbean because of Davy Jones' vendetta against him.
• Game-Breaker: On the series' page, here.
• Genius Bonus: The Braveheart Keyblade wielded by Riku◊ may seem random or whimsical, but it's actually a dimple key.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Reapers. While Nobodies in general tend to be reasonably tough challenges (compared to the average Heartless), Reapers are just annoying to fight against since they have moves that are just perfectly designed to interrupt the flow of combat. They're always airborne, restricting the combat to magic or aerial strikes, and it's hard to harm them while they're performing either their vine or spinning attacks. They also like to spread those shiny petal things around that, while not very damaging, are a a bit deceptive in how to dodge.
• Goddamned Boss: Data-Luxord is considered the easiest Data fight by many players due to his non-threatening and slow-paced attacks, but he is able to waste time with tricky minigames you're forced to play before you can attack him and an extremely long Desperation Attack. This, combined with the fact that your offensive stats don't affect the damage you deal to him, makes for a rather time-consuming encounter.
• Good Bad Bugs: Canceling a Wrathful Flurry attack stored with the Counter Shield Formchange, with another Formchange command in the queue, will keep the Wrathful Flurry stored rather than forcing the player to charge the reprisal again. Despite being present in the base game, this exploit was oddly not fixed in Re:Mind, which makes it highly exploitable against the Data Bosses.
• Growing the Beard: While the game itself is contentious in the overall ranking of KH games, it's considered a noticeable improvement by many compared to Osaka team's previous games specifically, which for years were criticized for having a lot of gameplay problems that were absent in KHI and II. While it still retains some issues, a lot of the problems in their previous games have been lessened or fixed entirely, such as bosses now having a proper revenge value and consistent stagger that makes it possible to learn the fight and react to what they do, basic keyblade combos being good as a source of damage, Sora having much better defensive options while airborne to make it easier to react to enemies, and so on. This got taken to another level entirely with the release of Limit Cut, which features data versions of the Organization and a fight with Yozora, with far more challenging difficulty and complex design compared to all the other bosses in the game, while still being entirely fair and a fun challenge. This is considered a huge improvement from the superbosses in Birth By Sleep, which are generally considered unfair and tedious to fight.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Woody's verbal smackdown against Xehanort was an epic moment, right up until you've seen his backstory in Kingdom Hearts χ in which we see he was given away as a baby by his mother to a hooded figure who later dropped dead, making Woody's words of "no one's ever loved you before" sting horribly. Doubly so given he's a reincarnation of the protagonist.
  • Following the initial battle in San Fransokyo, Big Hero 6 is labelled as unable to defend the city by a scathing online news article, leading Wasabi to remark "Who needs quality reporting when you can just make stuff up?" Cut to next year and a massive rise of fake news that has only gotten worse overtime.
  • Randall believes that if he forces Monsters, Inc. back to scream power, he'll be hailed as a legend. In Monsters at Work, the idea of the company switching to laugh power has become such a hot-button subject, with some believing that Mike and Sulley have betrayed monster principles. If Randall had succeeded, he probably would have been right.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • Ariel's wish to see other worlds in the first game can be viewed as coming true thanks to her being a summon in this game.
  • The opening to 0.2 ended up becoming rather infamous with fans for being a giant Hope Spot due to Aqua remaining trapped in the world of Darkness. It only got exacerbated when trailers showed that Aqua would indeed succumb to the darkness. After her boss fight however it gets proven to have been Foreshadowing all along, with Sora indeed actually pulling her back.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Many members of the fanbase have agreed that Jason Dohring's performance as Terra has improved vastly since Birth by Sleep, especially as Lingering Will with a cold, venomous, seething with hatred voice acting and when taking control over the Dark Figure, and as Terra when he shares an emotional reunion with Aqua and Ventus.
  • Not only does J.P. Manoux do a decent impression of Steve Buscemi, but his performance as Randall is also genuinely chilling. Not bad for somebody whose other claim to fame in regards to Disney is being the understudy for David Spade as Kuzco!
  • Many fans were shocked by the reveal that Dylan Sprouse, who is best known for his role as Zack Martin from The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, is the English voice of Yozora. Fans were not only impressed by his excellent performance, but also because he was using a voice that made him practically unrecognizable and very badass.
  • Considering his default is bombastic, deep-voiced manly men, including Ansem and Terra-Xehanort, it is amazing to hear Akio Ōtsuka almost perfectly replicate his late father's iconic hammy and raspy voice. While there are some cracks where you can tell it is the younger Ohtsuka doing an impression of his father, for the most part, it's as if the elder Ohtsuka came back from the dead one last time for Master Xehanort's final hurrah.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Ever since Disney purchased Marvel, and when this game was first announced it was exposed that one of the worlds explored would be Big Hero 6 (which is a Marvel property, even if highly modified), people have been clamoring like crazy to have more elements of the Marvel Universe appear (even as "secret bosses"). Now, it's been announced that Square Enix and Marvel have negotiated to make games together.
  • Mike joking in the epilogue of Monsters, Inc. that he was used as the ball in dodgeball. Sora can use him as a bowling ball while fighting Heartless.
  • Similar to the "Aquanort" Palette Swap edit mentioned above, certain fans had already taken to "Norting" various other members of Organization XIII following The Reveal of 3D, long before there was any indication it would be happening for real in-canon.
  • Mandy Moore was part of the celebrity cast in the first game as Aerith, but ended up being replaced by Mena Suvari. Fast forward more than a decade later and with the inclusion of Tangled among the Disney worlds, we have a starring character usually voiced by her. Sadly, she does not reprise her role as Rapunzel.
  • Many fans noted (such as here), how well the intro to Kingdom Hearts 3 synched up with "Lifelight", the theme of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Cut to two years later...
  • Sora's inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is made funny when you consider that at one point in this game, all of the main characters ended up dying, and Sora ended up having to rescue them (which is very similar to the World of Light mode). Furthermore, when the Re:Mind DLC brought back some of the Final Fantasy cast for a brief appearance, the two most popular characters of Cloud and Sephiroth didn't return... despite being in SSBU (one can easily joke that they were too busy being in Smash to return for Re:Mind).
  • Rex mistaking Sora for Yozora, since Nomura has stated he thinks of Sora and Noctis as brothers yet opposites. Which might hint at what Sora and Yozora's relationship will be like in future stories.
  • Game Informer's inaugural Game Infarcer section in 2006 featured an editor who claimed he had played games that hadn't come out yet. He then dropped a "spoiler" that when playing Kingdom Hearts III, Donald dies. He wasn't wrong.
  • The scene in Chain of Memories where Marluxia and Vexen interact with each other becomes even funnier when in the Japanese version of this game, both of them are voiced by Shūichi Ikeda and Shigeru Chiba. Both of which voiced another bickering duo who worked together as part of another group.
  • When Sora, Donald, and Goofy first arrive at Scala ad Caelum, Donald remarks that there's no one around. This is ironic when you consider all the empty towns in the previous games, where the cast would act like they were actually packed with people.
  • Back in March 2019, Dylan Sprouse posted a Photoshop of Sora fighting Mr. Moseby from The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, which Sprouse starred in. Come ReMind, and the Secret Episode ending reveals that Dylan is the voice actor for Yozora!
    • A bit of extra funny trivia to add to that, Jesse McCartney guest starred in Season 1 of the show^note  a few months before the JP release of II and half a year before its English release, where he interacts with Zack and even plays video games with him. After this game, one can say that Yozora and Roxas battled each other.
    • Even funnier? Alyson Stoner was a reoccurring character in Seasons 1 and 2. In other words Kairi and/or Xion was friends with Yozora once.
  • In Arendelle, using Sora's camera around the Frozen cast will make them question what his camera is. In Frozen 2, which takes place a few years after the first Frozen, cameras have been invented and are being used by the characters.
  • All powerful Nobody enemies are named and themed after classic Final Fantasy Jobs, with the exception of Reapers who had no Final Fantasy equivalent...until 2021, in which Final Fantasy XIV added the scythe-wielding Reaper as a playable Job!
  • The Classic Kingdom is a very obvious Shout-Out to Nintendo's Game & Watch LCD games, and not only does Sora now get to fight Mr. Game & Watch in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but Kingdom Hearts III was announced to be coming to the Nintendo Switch (albeit via cloud streaming), bringing everything full circle.
• Ho Yay:
  • Hayner is the first and most enthusiastic member of the Twilight Town trio to try and bring back Roxas, saying he seems like a pretty cool guy and thinking ahead for bringing him to the beach. The whole thing comes off as an infatuation.
  • After Woody saves Buzz from the darkness at the end of the Toy Box, he is shown laying ontop an unconscious Buzz as his pull-string delivers an... interesting line.
    Woody: Giddy up, partner! We gotta get this wagon train a-movin'!
  • Lea/Axel gets both an emotional reunion with Roxas and cradling a dying Saïx in his arms while promising to find him once he's recompleted as Isa again. Saïx's admission that he fell deeper into darkness because he was jealous of Axel's friendship with Roxas and Xion has some jilted lover undertones.
  • Eraqus and Xehanort's relationship can be compared to Professor Xavier and Magneto's, as both are old friends ended up on opposite sides of a conflict but still have great respect for each other. Eraqus is the only one who seems to explicitly forgive Xehanort, and the one to finally convince him to stand down in the end.
• I Knew It!:
  • After a new Nobody resembling Marluxia appeared in an early trailer, many people predicted that Marluxia himself (and subsequently other old Organization members) was going to come back.
  • Terra being Xehanort's guardian was a theory that was predicted as early as Birth by Sleep, since it first appeared when Xehanort fought Aqua after possessing Terra, and later when it makes a similar gesture to Terra summoning his Keyblade in Dream Drop Distance. This game confirms it.
  • Many people figured out that Vexen and Demyx would not be truly loyal to the Organization that they seemingly rejoined as soon as they first appeared in a trailer wearing black coats characteristic of Organization members.
  • Many people guessed that Drake Bell was voicing Young Eraqus long before it was confirmed.
  • Many fans correctly guessed, for entirely wrong reasons that Xion was recruited into the Organization again when a Riku Replica first appeared in a short version of the Big Hero 6 world trailer. Likewise, everyone predicted she would be restored.
  • A theory that had been circulating since the secret ending popped up and revealed Yozora was real was that the red-haired woman in white from Verum Rex was the possible identity of the Nameless Star. For the most part, until recently this had circulated around fans who were looking at past connections to Final Fantasy Versus XIII and how the red-haired woman was basically a palette swap of Stella, but was eclipsed by the Strelitiza theory. Re Mind would reveal that the person the Nameless Star was talking about was Yozora, at the least confirming part of this theory.
• Informed Wrongness: As a flip on Master Xehanort being Unintentionally Unsympathetic, Master Eraqus falls victim to this. Before he fades away he asks Terra, Aqua, and Ven, to forgive him, and apologizes to them for failing them as a teacher. Despite this, Eraqus' only crime was trying to destroy Ven and then fighting Terra to do it; while certainly a horrible thing to do, his reasons for doing so place him firmly in Knight Templar territory because he did it believing he had to do it to stop Xehanort from destroying the universe. Otherwise, Eraqus was always shown as being a compassionate, caring, and wise mentor figure to the group, and was one of the series' Big Goods. Coupled with the fact that while Eraqus is apologizing to his students, Xehanort is standing only a few feet away and says nothing, and it can leave one questioning why Eraqus feels he needs to be the one to give this speech.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: A few fans (particularly the Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game crowd) weren't happy about ReMind being overly focused on the new Superbosses, which are monumentally challenging compared to their predecessors, the Data Organization from Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, and are explicitly designed to punish wayward button mashing that you can usually get away with in most other fights in III.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!:
  • While the quality of what's in the game has been received with largely positive reviews, the choice of fewer but larger worlds results in III's story being substantially shorter than previous numbered entries, which is a sore spot to some fans considering it's the Grand Finale of its saga. The Battlegates are also a much shorter and shallower substitute for the coliseum tournaments found in the previous numbered entries.
  • Twilight Town is nowhere near as big and expansive as it was in II. The player can only visit four areas in the game: the Tram Common, the sewer and woods between them, and Old Mansion (which you cannot go inside of this time around). And despite being the hub-world of the game, Sora only visits the world twice, the second instance simply being to receive Pooh's Storybook again. It's especially jarring when you remember the predecessor had a full-fledged world with two different versions of the town, a sub-world in the Mysterious Tower, and a corridor that lead to The World That Never Was.
  • 100 Acre Wood only features one location, Rabbit's house, and three mini-games are really just the same game but with a few minor differences. On top of that, the entire cast isn't even present, with Eeyore, Kanga, and Owl mysteriously absent. It's a far cry from the much more expansive takes on the world in the previous numbered titles, especially after the more serialized Story Arc present in II.
  • When the game first released, a common criticism about Scala Ad Caelum was its incredibly short length. The game presents it as the last world, with beautiful scenery and environments to explore, not to mention the intriguing lore behind the place, except it's barely explorable at all and really just the battleground for the final battle against Xehanort. ReMind does manage to fix this by actually having Sora fully explore the place outside of boss battles.
  • Some players interested only in the ReMind story portion of the DLC have complained about the price, as the majority of the gameplay time is contained within the Limit Cut section and its brutally difficult bonus bosses, the Secret Episode and its even more difficult True Final Boss, and the new options for challenge runs provided by the new menu options. The ReMind story on its own can be cleared in approximately three hours, while defeating all of the new superbosses can take dozens of hours.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!:
  • While the game is, on a strictly technical level, a vast improvement over some of the more recent games in the series (especially Birth By Sleep and 3D), it still falls into some of the same pitfalls as the more recent entries, such as specific offensive options being objectively superior to others and the magic system still being as overpowered as ever. In addition, as a side effect of giving the player a ton of wonderful and unique game mechanics to play around with, it tilts the game balance in the player's favor to such a massive degree that most combat in the game can be trivialized by simply learning said mechanics.
  • A more localized example comes from the Saïx boss fight in the Skein. Due to the aggressive AI and overall strength of Sora's partners in the fight, it's possible to win this battle without doing anything.
  • The fact that there was no Critical Mode on release was also something of a sourspot. While Critical Mode has never been part of a main series title on release, always being added as part of the Updated Re-release, most players were used to having them already available and found Proud Mode a lacking substitute for players wanting a difficult option. This criticism was allayed when Critical Mode was released as part of an update patch a few months after release, and proved to be the same level of difficulty spike as its predecessors.
• It's the Same, So It Sucks: Both parts of the DLC can be criticized with this; ReMind does feature new cutscenes, a huge new set piece battle sequence, a new area to explore, and the ability to play as different characters in certain fights, but it also has you replaying through almost the entirety of the base game's finale, with many cutscenes having only minimal or no alterations at all, and all the new boss fights are with pallet swaps or previously existing bosses used in a new context. Meanwhile, Limit Cut is the same Data Organization boss rush set up as used in KH2 Final Mix, with very minimal story content to boot. While the beefed up bosses are insanely challenging and feature new move-sets and abilities, it can't help but feel like a bit of an unoriginal set-up.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Players doubted that Donald was going to die after casting Zettaflare given the infamous use of this trope with Goofy in the previous numbered game. In the game, it’s actually played both straight and subverted at the same time via time travel. At first, everyone got destroyed by the gigantic heartless tornado (Heartlessnado?) known as the Demon Tide, but Sora used the power of waking to reset the timeline and save everyone. So, yes, while everyone DID die, their deaths got un-done thanks to the power of waking.
• Magnificent Bastard: Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Hector Barbossa return. See that page for details.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Sulley has become a fan favorite for many people, with some even calling him the next Keyblade wielder, simply for the hilarious and awesome way he defeats Vanitas, the Organization member of that world. Sulley grabs the antagonist, throws them through a door, then throws that door into another door, rinse and repeat a few times, then destroys the last door, all while he and Mike have a very satisfied look on their face at the end of the sequence.
  • Woody has also gotten this treatment for telling Young Xehanort that nobody has ever loved him in an awesome Shut Up, Hannibal! moment.
  • Donald has become one after one-shotting Terranort with Zettaflare, a Flare spell normally reserved for Physical Gods. For reference, Zettaflare has only ever been used before once in the Final Fantasy Spiritual Successor Bravely Default by a god level entity in its Super Mode; Donald is just mortal and was receiving no magical assistance or powerup. This makes him the single most powerful mage in Square Enix's entire collective canon. And again, this is Donald Duck we're talking about here.
  • Remy, for his ability to do the one thing Xehanort couldn't; take control of Sora's body. There have also been jokes about Xehanort shaving his head in order to keep Remy from doing the same to him.
  • Darkside, the franchise's iconic Warm-Up Boss, has become this for his evolution to a brutal Wake-Up Call Boss on Critical Mode that can kill Sora in two attacks.
  • Surprisingly, once the ReMind DLC was released, Kairi became this. In the final battle, players can have a choice between playing as her and Sora and her play style feels very strong for many people for someone who just got a Keyblade and some training and can kick Armored Xehanort's ass by herself. And even before this, she actually goes toe to toe with Xemnas in a cutscene to the point of breaking his energy sabers, which elicits visible concern on his face and he has to drain her energy with a Nothingness attack in order to survive. Some even joke that the reason she seemed useless in the past games was because Xehanort saw her as the biggest threat to his plans and did everything he could to prevent her from becoming stronger and facing him.
  • Thanks to the sheer variety of the Keyblade Transformations allowing really flashy combat in the hands of a skilled player, Sora has become one in the eyes of the fandom. A lot of videos showing the boss fights in the game have the comments commenting on how powerful he looks and frequent comparisons to fellow Memetic Badass Dante being made.
  • Master Xehanort and Xion have also gotten this treatment. Due to their Data versions in ReMind being the two strongest among the Data Seekers of Darkness and in two of the toughest and coolest bosses in the whole franchise
  • And last but not least, Yozora. Not just for topping The Lingering Will as the strongest Optional Boss in the series but also for being the toughest boss in the history of the series so far. Go to any YouTube video of the Yozora fight and most comments will be saying how strong he is.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Dark Inferno, the base game's Superboss, for being very underwhelming and easy to defeat compared to the Final Mix optional bosses that players had several years to get used to before III's release from the PS3 and PS4 compilations. It became substantially more dangerous with the 1.05 Critical Mode update, but still only hovers at about the level of danger of a boss like KH2 Sephiroth instead of something like Lingering Will.
  • Kairi was long considered to be an underwhelming fighter in Kingdom Hearts II (though not in its manga adaptation), but this game was seen as the last straw for fans. The fact that she is again only shown defeating basic shadow Heartless onscreen and the fact she gets captured easily by Xemnas after the only time you have her as a party member. People made jokes that the Keyblade training Merlin gave her had no effect. Zigzagged once ReMind is released and she became a Memetic Badass.
  • Lea suffers from this due to the game portraying both him and Kairi as equally skilled Keyblade fighters, even though Lea is a much more experienced fighter in general. Many joke that Lea accidentally threw away his competence alongside his dual chakram style, or that Kairi infected him with her uselessness.
  • As Merlin was the one who trained both the above, some fans lump him in this category too.
  • The villains aren't immune to this as Vanitas proves. Despite being one of the most notorious antagonists in the series, he gets defeated in an extremely comical way by Sulley in the Monsters Inc. world, so much so that it's very difficult to take him seriously when he shows up again later on.
  • Despite his impressive battle prowess and skills at manipulation, fans only seem to remember Young Xehanort getting roasted by Woody from Toy Story. He seems to have more of a reputation as “the guy who got roasted by a cowboy doll” than the Time Master Dragon that he actually is.
  • ReMind's Data Greeting feature seems to have turned Master Xehanort into this. Some fans, particularly those dissatisfied with his fate in the base game, seem to love putting him in Chew Toy scenes.
  • One of the side effects of playing as another character in ReMind is that Sora gets controlled by the party member AI like everyone else, restricting him to basic attacks and healing. As a result, he often gets portrayed during these segments as ineffectually cheering on whoever has the spotlight while he gets ragdolled by the boss they're fighting.
• Memetic Molester: Terra-Xehanort. In Secret Reports, it's revealed that he took an interest in an amnesiac 15-year-old girl called "Subject X" and is really looking forward to perform experiments on her to unlock her memories. His reports also sound like he's really pissed when he believed that Ansem the Wise released her.
• Memetic Mutation: "Kingdom Hearts! I call upon your true form! OPEN NOW, AND SHOW ME THE MEMES TO COME!!!"
• Misblamed: The rumor of the game not seeing a release till 2020 stemmed from a misunderstanding of what was actually said. Square Enix gave the release window of this game (and several others) as being within the next three years and news articles jumped on it, claiming the game (along with Final Fantasy VII Remake) had been delayed. Trailers released since emphasized a 2018 release date, killing those rumors, and they remained dead even when the game was delayed to early 2019.
  • It's also assumed Tangled and Frozen's worlds just being the films' stories (with scenes even re-enacted from the movies) was because Square-Enix was lazy. Actually, this is just Disney again - they have rules with varying strictness for how their characters can be portrayed, and they were stricter than normal with Tangled and Frozen than they were with Big Hero 6 or Alice in Wonderland.
  • Some have also scapegoated Final Fantasy XV or all the various Kingdom Hearts titles as being why this game wasn't released sometime in 2008. Apart from the fact it wasn't even announced as being in development until 2013, some of this actually is Pixar's doing. Pixar wanted to have creative control, as opposed to Disney who would lay down rules for how their characters can be portrayed, and it took them a year to get back to Nomura.
• Moe:
  • Chirithy, who makes a weird cute voice every time it's teleporting in to talk to Sora. Knowing Chirithy is voiced by Lara Jill Miller only makes it even cuter.
  • The usual moes of the series, Naminé, Kairi, and Xion are back as well.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Most of the fights with the True Organization at the end of the game feature recreations of their iconic Boss Banter from past games, like Dark Riku's "You like that?", Xigbar's "R for reload!" and Ansem's "Submit!" It's sure to put a smile on your face if you're a long-time player of the series.
  • Some of the banter with the allies as well. Such as "You require healing" from Baymax, Woody's "Round 'em up!" and "This town ain't big enough!".
  • When playing as Kairi in the ReMind DLC the sound her Keyblade makes when it hits is this. It sounds like the soft ringing of bells and is absolutely perfect for the battle where you play as her against Armored Xehanort.
  • If you win the final stage of Data Luxord's ultimate game, he gracefully congratulates Sora with a loud "Well done!" and opens up to receive a long combo.

N to W

• Narm: But of course. You can find III in all its glorious awkwardness in the series' Narm page.
• Narm Charm:
  • Donald Duck roasting Terranort with Zettaflare is basically a Deus ex Machina, more or less. That said, it was done well enough to be a good enough Author's Saving Throw to turn the infamously unlucky Donald into the game's Memetic Badass overnight (especially when you get into some of the nitty gritty, and remember that less powerful Flare spells are the most powerful versions outright gods have done, and the universe's all powerful Keyblade Masters can do Megaflare at best).
  • Kairi, long considered a Damsel Scrappy, can be selected as the main character to fight against Armored Xehanort, main antagonist and Keyblade master, in the final battle sounds absolutely ridiculous on paper and her flower theme Keyblade and abilities don't really help. However, thanks to the boss being more appropriate as a final challenge than the main game and the fact that Kairi's abilities look legitimately cool and powerful, this makes it an awesome moment for Kairi.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Riku's new Keyblade has been given some flack for resembling a pin tumbler lock key rather than the typical skeleton key template that most other Keyblades follow. "Most", being that the previous Keyblade to use this design template was Fenrir from Kingdom Hearts II.
  • When several pieces of render art were released, Woody was listed as Woody Pride. There were fans who seemed to think the game gave Woody a last name, when in fact, Lee Unkrich revealed Woody’s full name on his Twitter back in 2009. In fact, his name was Woody Pride since the early days of the original movie, it just never had the chance to come up.
  • This isn't the first Kingdom Hearts game to have the Disney worlds use original storylines. Kingdom Hearts II had worlds such as the Nightmare Before Christmas, Mulan, and Lion King use original plots in either the first and/or second visit. For that matter, just about every Kingdom Hearts game had at least one world with an original storyline.
    • This also isn't the first Kingdom Hearts game to essentially retell the movie - also something that has been present since the first game.
  • People were surprised that there was only one secret boss in Kingdom Hearts III and that it seemingly had no connections to a future game. The truth is that the initial release of each game has been light on postgame content since the first game came out in Japan with the Phantom as its only secret boss, with additional bosses being added in the international and then Final Mix versions; Kingdom Hearts II didn't even add any secret bosses in the international release, with Sephiroth being the only secret boss in the game until Final Mix.
  • Many a YouTube comment on a certain scene in the Caribbean (and the Toybox) claim this is the first time that Disney characters fight back (or at least talk back) against the original villains. This isn't true actually. II features Jack and Luxord interacting with one another, along with Belle utterly defying Xaldin's Friend-or-Idol Decision with a nicely timed elbow to the stomach. This is especially strange to say about this game considering that Hercules actually does talk back against Xigbar in the very first world.
• One-Scene Wonder: The woman on top of a pillar surrounded by Heartless at Olympus who Sora has to rescue, mostly because she’s the first ever NPC to get any kind of attention during cutscenes in the same vein as established Disney characters like Meg and Phil (as other NPCs are relegated to the background in the other cutscenes), to the point that some players thought she was gonna be a minor recurring character in the world.
• Padding
  • While certainly not the first offender in the franchise, the Disney worlds feel like this for some players. Other than bringing up the potential existence of new guardians of light and having some very vaguely-explained benefits to the Organization experimenting within them, they don't really do much to progress the story (although some have brought up that Monstropolis being the reason why Vanitas, a major villain, was able to return, as a counterpoint to this, especially compared to most Disney worlds in previous games). Sora is told to unlock the "Power of Waking", so he goes and explores a Disney world, doesn't get the power, and goes to another world. Rinse and repeat. When the main plot finally does get moving, it's because of things Riku and Mickey have been doing off-screen, and Sora's questing in the Disney worlds immediately halts as he goes to help them as soon as he realizes the Power of Waking was with him all along, effectively meaning nearly the entirety of the worlds were pointless.
  • The Frozen Labyrinth segment in Arendelle. Basically in order to keep Sora out of the plot, Larxene somehow managed to construct an elaborate icy maze even though her powers are primarily electricity-based. It has absolutely no relevance to the world or related to the movie in any way nor is there any explanation for the Labyrinth with no characters making comments on it. Once Sora managed to escape through the level, the game continues on as if nothing happened.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: Sora and Rapunzel, not unlike the fumble with Sora and Ariel in I and II. Much of the gameplay in Corona boils down to “Rapunzel sees a new outside-world thing and Sora shows her how awesome it is.” In the game, this is a vehicle for fun minigames, whereas in Tangled, it was a vehicle for romantic development between her and Flynn. Making this either better or worse is that Rapunzel’s canon romantic partner isn’t Adapted Out like Prince Eric was in the first game — Flynn is right there in your party as well, watching from the background as Sora enjoys several bonding moments with Rapunzel, as if a Love Triangle is transpiring.
• Player Punch:
  • The reveal from E3 2018 that Aqua has apparently fallen to the darkness hit a lot of the fandom hard, as it essentially negates whatever vestiges of hope remained for the Birth by Sleep trio. This is especially poignant given Aqua's last appearance showed her just narrowly avoiding crossing the Despair Event Horizon, only for this tragic fate to befall her. The shocking development and its impact are nicely summed up here.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon is pretty much packed with these. From the heroes getting wiped out their first go around before a convenient second chance lets them amend for it, to a few Sympathy for the Devil moments for the Organization XIII members, to Kairi getting slain abruptly by Master Xehanort. And even after all of that, through all the tribulations the entire cast go through, Sora saves Kairi one last time - only to fade away for overusing the Power of Waking to do so. Just for one final gut punch.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Essentially how a good portion of the player base felt once the game dropped. Despite being the finale of the "Dark Seeker Saga", the story was felt to be underdeveloped and unfocused as there isn't any sense of urgency in the plot, with many citing there being less of a purpose for Sora in this one (in previous games he was at least locking down worlds, keeping Heartless & Nobodies from destroying worlds, and searching for his lost friends. Here he just stumbles around trying to unlock the Power of Waking and bumping into Organization members by coincidence who barely even confront him till the finale) and the villains' plans making very little sense to really get invested, with the inclusion of multiple characters who have little to no bearing in the long run. And considering this was the culmination of seven games worth of story (eight if you count 0.2 Birth by Sleep: A Fragmentary Passage), it was felt as a serious letdown. All the while though, the gameplay was praised as the best thing about this installment with smooth controls, a new battle system, powers and summons with most negativity being it was too easy but still an enjoyable enough romp regardless. And even that got fixed with the Critical Mode patch, which addressed complaints about not having a hard mode challenge.
  • Re-Mind zig-zags this a bit, on one hand it's essentially a perspective flip during the finale of the game, showing how Sora manage to help turn the tide in the second rendition of the battles against the Organization, leading to an awesome showdown of the Warriors of Light (sans Sora) fighting together against the Seekers of Darkness. However, it retreads the fights from that game as a DLC and is more of a detour trip than anything (The whole thing takes place during Sora's final fight with Master Xehanort right before the final blow). At most, it does give a better conclusion and Sequel Hook to the game.
• Popular with Furries: Sora's monster form in the Monstropolis world instantly attracted some furry fans upon his first reveal, thanks to his cat-like appearance, as well as some elements of fish.
• Polished Port: If you're willing to tolerate the Epic Games Store exclusivity, the PC port is remarkably well optimized compared to most of Square Enix's other PC ports. Managing to hit pretty high framerates in gameplay on capable hardware setups even on max settings and even removing the framerate cap on in-game cutscenes! It also supports native HDR output! (The closest thing to that on the console version is playing the Xbox One version on a Series X with the latter's "Auto HDR" function enabled.) As an added bonus, it even includes the Re:Mind DLC at no extra cost! It also features dual audio support for English and Japanese for the first time in the series outside of Japan and the previous Final Mix releases in case you wanted to hear one of the audios over the other, previously only released with the Japanese console release of Re:Mind.
  • Not a port necessarily, but, if you play the original console version of the game on the systems it was directly made for, you'll get varying results for how it runs. Base Xbox One is stuck at 720p and doesn't get too much above 30-45 FPS most of the time, base PS4 is roughly the same, but is stuck at 900p, Xbox One X gets up to 1080p and above, but doesn't reach a full 60 FPS, and PS4 Pro only gets a full 60 when you set it to 1080p at most and turn off supersampling, but it's still not a consistent 60. Play it on a PS5, or Xbox Series X, and the game finally runs at a locked 60 at any resolution it can due to the better hardware in the consoles. Even The Caribbean, which absolutely tanks the frame rate, even on PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. Load times are also cut down a bit if the game's installed directly to the SSDs in the consoles. However, this doesn't fix the bad frame pacing at times during cutscenes, nor does this fix the mode that caps the game at 30's bad frame pacing. That's up to Square to optimize it better in a patch if they do.
• Porting Disaster:
  • On the flipside, a lesser-known audio glitch can become worse on at least Xbox Series X/S, especially if you have the game in the Quick Resume function holding it in a suspended animation. The glitch causes parts of the audio to either cut out, and/or sound effects to play earlier, or later, than intended during cutscenes. It's apparently due to how the consoles store information in their caches and the game was, for some reason, never updated to fix this issue. The Series X can, for some reason, exacerbate this issue so chunks of dialogue can be skipped and sound effects are mis-timed unless you do a reboot of the console. And, even then, this doesn't always fix it, as it can randomly happen and isn't consistent on when it happens.
  • Nintendo Switch owners received arguably the worst version of the game. The version on Switch is cloud-based, which means that a constant Internet connection is required to play it. Even in ideal conditions with a decent connection, the game runs rather poorly and is far from the definitive way to play it.
• Questionable Casting: Many fans were confused by the fact that Mandy Moore isn't the voice of Rapunzel in this game, as not only was she the voice of Aerith back in the original Kingdom Hearts, but this is the only piece of official Disney media featuring Rapunzel where Moore doesn't voice her, with her reprising her role every other time including the next Disney media she's featured in.
  • In the main game (before the DLC content), Master Xehanort was voiced by the late Rutger Hauer. While a fantastic actor, most fans felt that he was wildly miscast in this particular role, as his voice is almost always calm and composed, even somewhat alluring, which makes it stick out like a sore thumb compared to the harsh and throaty voices always at risk of going full ham that Chikao Ohtsuka, Akio Ōtsuka, Leonard Nimoy and Hauer's own replacement Christopher Lloyd provide.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Port Royal was one of the less popular worlds in Kingdom Hearts II, but there was a lot more enthusiasm for the world (now called The Caribbean) following the E3 announcement that it would return, largely due to the new art style making Sora, Donald and Goofy not clash nearly as much with the aesthetic this time around. It was even better after the game was released, with The Caribbean being frequently named in reviews as quite possibly the best Disney world in the game, playing almost like a miniature version of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.
  • The Olympus Coliseum was mostly just a recurring Tournament Arc in previous games, with little of the area outside the coliseum able to be explored; Kingdom Hearts II allowed players to traverse the underworld while Birth by Sleep featured a small town near Thebes, though both locales were rather limited in size, and after appearing in so many games many players were becoming tired of it. In this game, fans get to explore the entirely of Mount Olympus in all its gorgeous detail as well as fend off the Titans storming the home of the Olympians, an event fans of Hercules had been anticipating for years. Also of note is how III includes all four of the Titans, not just Rock and Ice.
  • One of the less popular members of the Organization was Vexen due to being an Insufferable Genius who's not as strong as he thinks he is, but he gained more approval upon The Reveal that he had become The Atoner and The Mole who plays a pivotal role in bringing Roxas back.
  • Anti-Form from Kingdom Hearts II has been retooled as Rage Form, and its changes have been better received than its previous incarnation. While Anti-Form was an interesting idea (the manifestation of darkness in Sora’s heart taking over temporarily), it was used solely as a punishment for overusing the Drive command, turning Sora into a Glass Cannon that was more Glass than Cannon, taking away his party members, severely limiting his defensive options, and disabling healing via magic or items. Rage Form is instead an optional risk/reward Formchange that always has a chance to open up as a command when Sora falls to low HP and fully restores your HP on activation. While Rage Form does still limit your defensive options by removing your ability to use magic, items, links, or shotlocks, it still allows you to guard, unlike Anti-Form, which makes it so a skilled player is much less vulnerable, and Rage Form can potentially be cancelled out of early if situation commands with party members appear. On top of also keeping your companions, the healing they afford also pairs well with Rage Form's "Riskcharge" command, which halves your current HP to increase damage done while in Rage Form, and using it three times allows you to pull off the form's Finish command, which deals heavy area-of-effect damage before reverting you back to normal.
  • Kairi in ReMind, who does a 180 transformation from a disappointing Faux Action Girl and Memetic Loser to a certified Action Girl and Memetic Badass.
• Ron the Death Eater: Mickey has gotten excessive amounts of flak from the fandom, since a good number of people blame him for Aqua’s internment in the Realm of Darkness being as long as it was, with many fans saying that Mickey either neglected to save Aqua or just outright forgot she existed. However, Mickey never knew where Aqua went; she went off to confront Terranort on her own, and vanished into the darkness without any witnesses. And even if Mickey knew that Aqua was in the Realm of Darkness, he had bigger things to worry about than saving one person. The only permanent physical passage that exists to the Realm of Darkness is in Destiny Island's grotto; Mickey couldn't freely go between realms until he got Kingdom Key D, immediately after which he was saddled with trying to bring down Organization XIII's machinations. And even then, assuming Mickey somehow knew where Aqua was and how to get to her, going after her alone would still be suicide. He'd only originally went into the Realm of Darkness to find Kingdom Key D and get the hell out, explicitly because it was so dangerous in there. Only once Mickey had the knowledge, the means, capable backup, and a solid plan was rescue of Aqua anywhere close to feasible; and even with all of that, it was still extremely dangerous. In fact, Mickey's excuses for not go after Aqua for so long was outright explained by Yen Sid himself in the previous installment. Yen Sid also said that the reason they didn't tell anyone else where Aqua was (once they found out) is because they knew the likes of Sora and Riku would charge in, guns blazing... and end up with the same fate.
• Salvaged Story:
  • One of the biggest complaints fans have had since Kingdom Hearts II is that the Disney worlds have largely been relegated to watered-down retellings of their source material, devoid of Character Development and lacking any connection to the overarching plot. III still features several film adaptations (i.e., Corona, Arendelle, and The Caribbean), but they have have stronger ties to the main plot and better character writing along the lines of Beast's Castle and Space Paranoids from II, while other worlds (like San Fransokyo, Monstropolis and the Toy Box) have completely original plots that transpire after the movies' stories. This was done well enough that some people have called the Disney characters' moments to shine (especially Woody and Sully) some of the best moments in the whole game.
  • With the return of the Pirates of the Caribbean world, the graphics have been overhauled to have a more consistent look between the native characters and Sora's party, avoiding the uncanny effect the clashing aesthetics created in II.
  • Larxene reveals that there are new seven pure lights/hearts, implying they are the successors to the Princesses of Heart. Since not all of the original seven Princesses of Heart were Disney Princesses and it seemed to lock out subsequent Disney Princesses, the concept came off as They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character and opened up a Fandom-Specific Plot. Elsa, Anna, and Rapunzel are some of these new hearts.
  • Presumably, as a response to Donald infamously refusing to heal in gameplay, they establish him as not only being primarily a Black Mage, but the Black Mage, by having him finish off Terra-Xehanort using a ZettaFlare (one of the most powerful spells ever, previously only used by Physical Gods, and even then only once, and said god was in its super mode at the time), making him the single most powerful mage in Square Enix's collective canon.
  • Coded was widely criticized for having Data-Sora's thanking Data-Naminé counting as the official "Thank Naminé". In his conversation with Naminé in the final world, Sora points out that the datascape didn't count and that the thanks would only count when they could actually talk face to face in the real world.
  • A noticeable plot hole from Dream Drop Distance was how Xemnas trying to complete his artificial Kingdom Hearts and merge with it no longer made sense if the point of it was to create thirteen vessels for Xehanort's heart, since most of those vessels were already dead by that point. This game has Xemnas going behind Master Xehanort's back in a vague scheme to use Demyx, Luxord, Marluxia and Larxene's connection to the Keyblade to his advantage, suggesting that Xemnas is simply willing to break with Xehanort's own objectives to seek power for himself, explaining his actions back in Kingdom Hearts II.
  • ReMind addresses a lot of fan criticisms.
    • One of the first scenes of the DLC outright addresses the mechanics of how the Thirteen Seekers of Darkness were able to assemble their ranks, particularly in how Xion managed to come back and answering why Terra didn't return after the destruction of Ansem and Xemnas. A later scene also shows the resolution of the Lingering Will's fight against Terra-Xehanort, whereas the former just disappears in the game proper.
    • Some fans felt a bit deflated after learning that Saïx, pulling a Heel–Face Turn, removed some of the epic catharsis of the fight against him in the Keyblade War. The DLC adds an additional stage where Roxas, Xion, and Axel also fight Xemnas, who is decidedly less sympathetic than Saïx at this point of the game and was the one who ordered Saïx to be so cruel to the heroes, giving back some of the catharsis robbed by the reveal of Saïx's true nature. The fight against Saïx subsequently comes off more as a "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight with the intent of freeing him from Xehanort's control.
    • After many expressed annoyance at the removal of Final Fantasy characters, ReMind features them in the Limitcut Episode where Riku goes to see them for help finding Sora.
    • Kairi's storyline was criticized for turning her into a Faux Action Girl, despite the buildup since Dream Drop Distance that she would take a level in badass. ReMind not only gives a more justifiable reason for her kidnapping,^note She had her energy drained by Xemnas after going toe-to-toe with him in battle and for Xehanort easily offing her,^note Xehanort did so because he had the power to bring her back if he ended up losing the χ-blade; if this happened, he needed the Princesses of Heart to open Kingdom Hearts for him, and thus Kairi was a Plan B should Plan A go south but it finally makes her a fully playable character in the battle against Armored Xehanort, pushing her into full Action Girl territory and allowing her to avenge her own fridging. In fact, reactions to the DLC made her a Memetic Badass for how she was able to stand against Xehanort after such comparatively little training.
    • A new scene gives Naminé screentime in the game prior to the ending, and she's shown doing her part to help, rather than the plot just saying that she helped.
    • The real reason why Aqua just stood still while the giant Heartless tornado devoured everyone? It wasn't a case of Cutscene Incompetence, but rather a Trauma Button where upon seeing the massive mass of shadows, her trauma and despair from being in the Realm of Darkness for so long makes her see multiple copies of her Anti-Aqua self swarming her.
    • To answer the question of what everyone else was doing while Sora was fighting Master Xehanort and why they only showed up after the fight was over, we get a playable battle where, at the same time Master Xehanort acquires the χ-blade in Scala, the other Keyblade wielders are fighting the Replica Xehanorts in an area resembling the skies above Scala ad Caelum, showing that even if they weren't helping Sora personally, they were playing just as important a part in the final battle.
    • Many fans felt that Mickey had lost a lot of his mystique as the series went on, and as detailed under Ron the Death Eater he had also lost the respect of many. But now, at a point where you are able to play as him, he is given perhaps one of the most awesome moments in Kingdom Hearts history, where even while grievously injured he stands alone against the Replica Xehanorts and WINS.
    • For those who felt that Xehanort's ultimate defeat in the original was anti-climactic, there is now a much more epic defeat of the merged replica of Xehanort at the hands of every Guardian of Light, which is implied to have an effect on the real Xehanort's power which helps lead to his own defeat at Sora, Donald and Goofy's hands.
    • Any assumption that Xehanort was Easily Forgiven by everyone aside from just Eraqus simply because he had good-intentioned motivations behind his evil actions is done away with in a scene where Sora from the future is confronted by Master Xehanort in past Scala ad Caelum, and it's clear that Sora, even after learning his true motives, still despises Xehanort for the horrible things he did; especially what he did to Kairi, which Sora is in the middle of trying to reverse. Sora shows nothing but contempt and animosity towards the old master when he taunts him about the inevitability of failing in his endeavor to save Kairi from the fate that he himself had given to her.
    • The glaring inconsistency in Xehanort's explanation for his motives was addressed, clarifying that his claims of darkness overtaking the light—which appear to contradict his earlier statements of the world being filled with too much light—were actually made out of disdain for those who hid their darkness behind "tainted/false light", while his path to embodying the darkness was slyly encouraged by the Master of Masters. Thanks to this, it can easily be surmised that he maintained the goal of balancing light and darkness the entire time, but his approach was twisted as he became Drunk on the Dark Side and then as he got a bit more lucid. While somewhat sympathetic and well-intentioned, it is made clear that Xehanort came to his conclusion and actions out of bitter pride, further destroying the notion that his many evil acts are being ignored to portray him as a misguided hero.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The enemy lock-on refuses to work if your target isn't onscreen. This makes it unnecessarily difficult to find whatever you're trying to fight, especially if you're being shot at by a mook who's hiding in an elevated position. This is fixed in the 1.09 update, along with a number of other combat fixes included in the update.
  • For all of the new emphasis and free form exploration the Gummi Ships get, you don't actually have full 3D movement, much less any convenient way to loop or anything outside of a quick button command to reverse direction. Your ascent/descent caps at a certain angle, which is bad for huge spans of space with plenty of verticality. And if you're looking for item or blueprint crystals that happen to be in tight areas, this means you have to clumsily circle a few times and keep reorienting yourself to even shoot them.
  • If you fail a cooking mini-game, you lose the ingredients used to make them, meaning you will have to search for them again or waste Munny at the shop to get more.
  • Blocking is extremely hit-or-miss. The main problem comes from how the game counts combo attacks from enemies and how many invincibility frames it gives you as a result. This is easily seen when fighting against Marluxia, whose desperation move involves him cartwheeling his scythe in circles at Sora. In Kingdom Hearts II, the blocking was much more efficient and allowed you to block the attack as long as you got the timing right. Here, the game only counts a few hits from it as part of a combo before having Sora's block stop working and you get hit. Like the lock-on, blocking was adjusted in the 1.09 update.
  • The Disney worlds are much bigger and more expansive this time around, to the point where areas that would be broken up into multiple rooms in past games have no loading zones for quite a while. This is technically impressive, but it rears its ugly head whenever you die to a mob fight, as the "Continue" mechanic was not changed from past games. This means that using Continue will send you back much further than before, which can be frustrating in large rooms with multiple tough mob battles.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Using the characters other than Sora amounts to this, as they're much more poorly equipped than he is by endgame. Riku in particular is often considered to be the worst out of the four other playable characters since he is seen as a less skilled Sora without anything to differentiate. The player is given the chance to re-select their character on each retry if they find they've made things too difficult for themselves.
  • Playing as Kairi is also worth a particular mention. In addition to her lower stats and a fighting style that you haven't gotten used to yet, the chance to play as her comes during the final boss of the DLC's main story. Be prepared for a challenge if you wish to play as her.
• Serial Numbers Filed Off: While the Classic Kingdom minigames' visuals are very heavily inspired by the Game & Watch, the name for said device isn't actually on the handhelds within the game.
  • The "Play Plus" game console is clearly meant to be a parody of PlayStation, though which one is up for debate, since the Toy Box world takes place between Toy Story 2 and 3, which has it stuck between the late 90s and early 2010s, especially evidenced by Andy still having an old CRT TV in his room like in 2. So far, the PS2 seems the most likely, as a sports game on the shelves at Galaxy Toys is titled "Amazing Jam 2001" - the PS2 was released in 2000.
  • Verum Rex is clearly Final Fantasy Versus XIII before it was rebranded as Final Fantasy XV, just with different character designs and a lot of Nomura's original design elements reinstated into the world.
    • To a lesser extent, Sora's Ultimate Form evokes a lot of Noctis' original abilities showcased in the earliest Versus XIII trailers, compared to XV.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Unsurprisingly the Sora/Riku fans weren’t too happy when the Sora/Kairi subtext practically became text in this game.
• Shipping Goggles: While Tetsuya Nomura confirmed in the Ultimania that Riku picking up Naminé in Radiant Garden at the end of the game was simply the fulfillment of Repliku's Last Request and was not indicative of romantic feelings between the two, many fans (particularly those who haven't read the Ultimania) insist that their interaction is either Ship Tease or a Relationship Upgrade.
• Sidetracked By The Golden Saucer:
  • It can potentially be quite tempting to spend more time than necessary just flying around in deep space in your Gummi Ship looking for Heartless to challenge and places to explore.
  • Somebody could spend hours trying to find ingredients and cook the perfect recipe before moving on with the plot.
  • You will likely be doing a lot of sailing and exploring in the Caribbean well after its story is completed.
• Signature Scene:
  • The "Let It Go" sequence in Arendelle, for recreating the scene from Frozen almost shot-for-shot, down to the way Elsa's body moves and the way the snow swirls.
  • The battle with Anti-Aqua, due to the trailers depicting the character’s Face–Heel Turn and the fans’ memes hyping it up.
  • The party's confrontation with Terra-Xehanort at the Keyblade Graveyard, but not for good reasons. The entire heroic cast is suddenly stricken with Cutscene Incompetence and The Worf Effect, and they spend the scene being taken out in one hit, not even attempting to defend themselves or fight back save for Riku, Donald, and Goofy.
  • Related to the above, Donald defeating Terra-Xehanort with Zettaflare.
  • The chess game between young Eraqus and young Master Xehanort. It's featured in the reveal trailer, both opening cutscenes, and pops up a few times throughout the main story. It's so iconic that the world it takes place in, Scala ad Caelum is the site of the final battle with Xehanort.
  • The Big Damn Reunion of the Wayfinder trio and the Seasalt/Clocktower trio is an emotional high point and joyfor those who love the characters.
• Special Effect Failure: As utterly fantastic as the graphics are most of the time, there are a couple moments when they slip up, particularly in regard to the frame rate of certain animations.
  • The Shadows in the first battle of the Keyblade Graveyard have an extremely low frame-rate that make them look more like stop-motion characters than anything belonging in the fluid animation of the rest of the game.
  • In this game's recreation of the Let it Go scene, it's apparent that the computer, or a computer that's part of a renderfarm that rendered that scene, either lost its connection to the authentication servers for the Arnold Renderer in Maya, or didn't have a valid license for it in the first place, because the tell-tale for that (an "Arnold" watermark) can be seen in that scene. Strangely, that watermark isn’t found in the original Japanese version of that scene, and it is also not the first time this has happened in a Kingdom Hearts game. The opening for Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 also had an instance of the Arnold watermark showing up in a single frame.
• That One Attack: Saix's thrown Claymores are not only unblockable but they also stuns Sora on impact. On higher difficulties this will almost always reduce Sora's HP to One, rendering him defenseless against his next attack without giving the player the opportunity to heal themselves. And said boss loves to spam it during his Desperation Attack.
• That One Boss: The game has a few, listed on the series’s respective page.
• That One Level: The third and final Gummi Ship zone, the Eclipse. You're dropped into a space maze that is rather confusing to navigate until you figure out which way to go, with loads of walls and enemies in every direction. Once you manage to get to The Very Definitely Final Dungeon and find waypoints outside of the maze, it's not too bad, but navigating it is a huge pain in the butt due to how unhelpful the map is. It gets worse with the denial of a full vertical ascent or descent, as the entire maze doesn't cooperate with this problem very well.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Finding all the Lucky Emblems. Many are in plain sight if you just keep an eye out for them, but others are tucked away inside of containers, behind walls, or under world objects, making them easy to miss. Yet others are made from objects in the environment that only align to form the Emblem when viewed at a certain angle from a certain spot, or are made of things so innocuous (stickers on boxes, a pile of firewood) that you can be looking right at them and not realize it's an Emblem. Some are even hidden in the distant background of worldspaces you can't access, making it even easier to just not notice them among the background textures. Finding all the Emblems without a guide requires you to scour each world searching every nook and cranny and surveying the level layout from every angle.
  • Defeating the strongest Heartless Ship in The Caribbean. Not only is it a serious challenge even for a max-level Leviathan, it's flanked by two only slightly weaker ships. But the worst offender is that sailing too far away will cause it to de-spawn, which is very easy to do accidentally while dodging its volleys.
  • Getting a high score on some of the Flantastic Seven can make many a gamer pull their hair out... and if you want to forge the Ultima Weapon, you'll need to get those scores to earn one of the Orichalcum+.
    • The Cherry Flan in Olympus is easily the most infamous Flan to get a high score on. It requires you to ride on Goofy's shield down a pathway towards the Agora, while hitting enough Flan to score 20000 points along the way. Problem is, the shield controls are tricky to get the hang of, the game expects you to fit through several narrow corridors on said shield, and hitting a wall even once slows you down, quite possibly screwing over your score and forcing you to retry the entire minigame. And unlike some other Flan, where there's an Easy Level Trick to get a high score easily, the closest thing this minigame has is a lone passageway full of Flan that you'll completely miss if you travel along the intended path. Needless to say, you'll probably grow sick of the Rumble Racing music (punctuated by Sora repeatedly screaming "Aah!" and constant shield/wall clinking noises) by the time you get the high score.
    • The Strawberry Flan in Toy Box is made more difficult by the shape of its arena. The ceiling is low around the edges of the room, so as your stack of Flans gets taller and taller, you'll need to stay near the middle so additional Flans don't just fall off when you hit them, which restricts your movement and makes you more prone to crashing into the rolling obstacle Flans and the walls.
    • The Honeydew Flan in San Fransokyo requires you to bounce on different Flans between buildings, which is made extremely difficult by the Camera Screw and forces the player to handle Sora's landings and wrestle with the camera at the same time... unless you turn the camera setting from "Auto" to "Manual", at which point it becomes far easier and the only real problem is Sora going into freefall mode if he bounces too high. And because "Auto" is the default and this is the only section in the game where a top-down view is so crucial, many players will miss out on this unconventional Easy Level Trick.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: One of the biggest criticisms towards the Kingdom of Corona and Arendelle worlds are how the plots in those worlds are just retellings of the movies they're based on, with Sora's group only existing to prevent outside interference from the Heartless and Organization XIII. While the franchise has always had issues with this, it is especially noticeable in Arendelle, as Sora's group doesn't have much interaction with the Frozen cast, and the only party member from that world is Marshmallow, who players only get towards the end of the main plot. The Caribbean catches less flak despite also copying the plot of a movie, since there are more noteworthy differences applied to make it feel more fresh, and with Sora's group far more involved in the story's climax, plus the fact that the movie's plot was fractured between following different groups of characters already.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • A lot of characters end up sidelined with little, if anything, of importance to do. Aside from Sora, Donald, and Goofy, only Riku, Mickey, Aqua, Roxas, Xion and Terra get to actually do anything that helps progress the plot in some way, and even then they're often rendered useless. Kairi and Lea mostly just here to be party members for the final world's Boss Rush, and to hold up their Keyblades with the rest of the group for a couple of cutscenes. The appearance of Naminé can be missed entirely, since her only appearance outside of the ending is in an optional scene gotten by talking to an NPC you can easily overlook, and the Lingering Will appears for a Big Damn Heroes moment and then vanishes from the plot. Ventus manages to fare out slightly better than them due to his Big Damn Heroes when he saves Aqua from being killed by Vanitas, but not much aside from that. Rectified in ReMind, which makes sure to give absolutely everyone their moment.
  • Maleficent and Pete are also similarly sidelined, as they only interact with Sora a grand total of once and spend most of the game on a black box hunt that doesn't have any impact on the game's events. Compared to their appearances in Kingdom Hearts I and II, where they at least had their own schemes with other Disney villains and affected the plot, their subplot comes off as more of a Sequel Hook that shows up now and then. They don't even get their own boss fights.
  • Master Xehanort himself is shown in the opening FMV video and talked up as the ultimate Big Bad of the story throughout the game...but he does not appear in person until the very final lap of the game, making him come across like an Orcus on His Throne type of villain up until he has to become the Final Boss.
  • Despite the opportunity to do so, with the situation of the toys and Buzz being a party member, Zurg is never faced as an opponent in the Toy Box world.
  • Despite appearing in Monstropolis to cause trouble and having his speed and invisibility from the movie, Randall is never a boss in the game.
  • Due to Executive Meddling, out of all the main characters featured in Arendelle, only Marshmallow is a party member. Many players were disappointed that you don't get to have Elsa or Anna in your party. They don't even have much of a presence in the game as supporting characters, despite them potentially being new Princesses of Heart.
  • In Birth by Sleep's "Blank Points" – it was revealed that Eraqus had secretly possessed Terra before Xehanort did, heavily implying that Eraqus would play an important role in saving Terra. Instead – Eraqus doesn't return until after Xehanort's defeat, let alone during Terra's restoration.
  • The Lingering Will returns for an extremely satisfying showdown with Terra-Xehanort and even gets a few more lines of dialogue, but completely disappears afterwards. The DLC at least later explains what happened to it, but some fans were still disappointed they couldn’t play as it one more time for the rematch or even fight alongside it as Sora.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Both of the Tangled and Frozen retellings. Sora is dumped straight into the movie plots as an outside force that ultimately has no place in them besides keeping outside forces out, and a lot of context is completely glossed over or missed. This isn't anything new for Disney retellings in ''Kingdom Hearts'', but it is especially bad with Arendelle, as Larxene outright does a Lampshade Hanging on the repetition of the New Seven Hearts side-plot from the Kingdom of Corona, and ultimately Sora basically talks with Elsa briefly twice before mostly stumbling along as the story happens entirely in the background. Hans, a bit of a popular villain, doesn't even get a single spoken line and basically appears briefly in two scenes to show "hey there's a non-Organization XIII bad guy", and to some it might feel like the movie was only just barely in there because it's Disney's most popular cashcow.
    • Larxene mentions a possible conflict of light and darkness within Elsa's heart and that she's eager to see what she'll choose...which would have been a great tie-in to the scene where Elsa is getting attacked by the guards in her ice palace and starts fighting back and almost kills them before Hans talks her down; they could have easily put Sora in Hans's place as the person who stops Elsa (and then have him get knocked out by the chandelier along with her if they wanted to avoid talking to Hans so much). Instead, Sora gets knocked down the mountain a bunch of times and never gets inside the ice palace, and we only see the aftermath of the scene where Hans has captured Elsa and is bringing her back to Arendelle.
    • Given what a sadistic psycho Larxene is, her being on this world opens a lot of potential scenes where she relentlessly taunts Elsa about her own fears, or better yet, push her down to the paths of darkness by making her succumb to it. But unfortunately, come the game itself, she doesn't do anything but stop Sora from interfering from the plot while also being the only Organization member to not interact with anyone from this world^note Marluxia at least has brief interactions with Gothel and Rapunzel.
  • The entire Seven New Hearts plotline is one. It's only relevant in Corona and Arendelle, and gets promptly forgotten about afterwards with only half the roster filled. Riku and Mickey are sent to look for various missing Guardian candidates, so it would have been logical for Sora to cover bases and search for Princesses of Heart instead of being charged with the vague order of "somehow acquire the power of waking again on your own in a manner completely different from the first time".
  • While at Yen Sid's Tower, Mickey brings the idea of retracing Aqua's steps through the worlds and finding people she formed bonds with. A great idea to revisit Birth by Sleep worlds, give Sora a clearer goal, and tie Kairi into the main plot, given her bond with Aqua and her being located in Radiant Garden. Unfortunately, this mission is taken on by Riku and Mickey almost completely offscreen, while Sora instead goes off on a much less relevant jaunt to Twilight Town.
  • The power of waking could have been a solid reason for Sora's adventures in the Disney worlds, if it was actually tied into the Disney worlds whatsoever. Considering that Sora had lost his power from the past games, directly strengthening himself and gaining a new power from his bonds with Disney friends could not only give a sense of progression and plot development, but also tie into the themes of a series whose most iconic quote is "My friends are my power!" Instead, the power of waking is forgotten about in nearly every world, with Donald and Goofy quite literally having to remind him about it, and then Ventus reveals in the endgame that Sora had the power of waking the entire time, retroactively making all of the Disney worlds pointless.
  • Many fans felt the Anti-Aqua boss fight would have worked far better if, instead of Sora, it was Mickey that was the one the player took control of due to the deep connection the two have. Given that it was Mickey who teamed up with Aqua multiple times, helped her destroy the proto χ-blade and save Ventus from Vanitas, saved her while she was in the Realm of Darkness but being forced to leave her there once more to save all the worlds (something the previous scene between them made clear that he feels completely responsible for), making Mickey the Player Character for this boss fight would have been a much more fitting and emotional confrontation given the history and tightly forged bond of between these two. It doesn't help that the impact of the fight we did get is much weaker due to Sora not remebering his first meeting with Aqua.
  • One could consider 100 Acre Wood to be a complete waste, it all takes place in one area, and the plot is just helping Rabbit out with his gardening using three variations on the same minigame. Even worse, it's entirely optional, as you can forget to approach it entirely (there's no reason to return to the Twilight Town Bistro on foot except for 100 Acre Wood at that point) and the game just moves on without it.
  • Character interactions:
    • Given that her Black-and-White Morality towards the darkness hasn't been challenged by any of her experiences, the story never addresses how Aqua would react to someone like Riku: a named Keyblade Master that freely wielded darkness, but unlike Xehanort or Terra, was able to resist its corruption.
    • While the two briefly chat during the Guardians vs Xehanort Replicas fight in Re:Mind, there really wasn't much in the way of Roxas and Ventus interacting, and, more importantly, addressing their identical features.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: As befits a Creepy Doll, the Angelic Amber is very human-looking (with a slight anime touch) and beautiful, but her unchanging unblinking expression and movements are just wrong.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Swapping your equipped Keyblade, Formchange or not, mid-combo allows for cool combos, and it can also have a practical use with switching between Strength- and Magic-based Keyblades. But it's tricky to consistently perform, since the input is very unreliable and the combos are just as likely to whiff, so many players only switch Keyblades to reserve Formchanges.
  • The game has multiple playable characters, but anyone not named Sora gets only one or two boss fights. They even have the ability to level up and their own non-battle HUD, but they feel underutilized in the final product.
  • Movement abilities are reduced to this, after so many games where finishing the Journal usually relied on you revisiting an area with upgraded movement, such as high jump, air dash and glide, giving players a reason to go back to previous worlds to finish treasures/collectibles, this game has Sora already able to do some fancy acrobatics with Flowmotion and you never have to visit a world again except after the worlds story (as the story usually railroads you) and you get high jump really early on, meaning as long as you know where what you are after is, you can 100% a worlds collections on, at most, your second visit, only needing to return to finish minigames or farming for synthesis materials.
• Unexpected Character:
  • A Toy Story world was one thing, since it was the premier Pixar movie. But Monsters, Inc.? The factory and all, along with both Sulley, Mike, Boo and Randall?
  • The Unversed return after having not made a significant appearance in the series since their lone appearance in Birth by Sleep.
  • Most folks thought that any Organization members they beat in previous games were over and done with. Especially with the reveal that the new Organization is mostly made up of Xehanorts gathered from across time. And then the 2018 trailer revealed Marluxia, Larxene, and Luxord are coming back for another round.
  • While many were wholly unsurprised by the reveal of a world taking place in the universe of Cash Cow juggernaut Frozen (2013) to happen, the confirmation of a Pirates of the Caribbean-themed world with all of its original characters returning? Not so much, especially after Nomura's past comments implied that Hercules would be the only returning world. In fact, some fans initially thought the world was instead going to one based on Treasure Planet because of said comments by Nomura until the trailer soon proved otherwise.
  • Much like the Unversed, the Bug Blox also make a return appearance, seeming to be the main threat in San Fransokyo, after previously solely appearing in coded.
  • Most people expected Elsa or Anna to be the party member of the Frozen world. Surprisingly, it’s neither, but actually Marshmallow who fights with Sora in that world.
  • Musically, not many people expected Skrillex of all people to have a hand in composing the opening song, "Face My Fears". Or that "Don't Think Twice" won't be the opening song despite being used in all trailers ever since it was first revealed.
  • While the Hundred Acre Wood and Pooh and company are not too surprising of an appearance in III given their presence in past games, this game marks the first time Lumpy the Heffalump has had any sort of physical presence in a Kingdom Hearts game. Adding to the surprise in his appearance is the fact that he had seen comparatively less use in Pooh media at the time.
  • Gopher was also a surprise treat, as while he did appear in the previous game, within that thirteen year span, he too had practically disappeared from the Pooh franchise. For that matter, he actually appears right beside Lumpy - the two characters have never appeared before together, Gopher having been replaced by Beaver on My Friends Tigger & Pooh. Their joint appearance is also an interesting cultural mix. In a way, Gopher represented the Americanized angle the franchise had taken up until the 90s, while Lumpy is an aspect of the slight realigning towards its British roots, also around the time Gopher practically disappeared until this game. Therefore, Gopher and Lumpy appearing together kind of pays homage to the franchise's evolution, best of both worlds.
  • Even though the Einhänder developers worked on the Gummi Ship segments of this game, it's still a surprise to see it's most infamous boss Schwarzgeist appear as a Gummi Ship-exclusive Superboss.
  • The lack of Final Fantasy characters, especially Final Fantasy XV characters... in place of the surprise reveal in the Secret Movie that Yozora from Verum Rex is Real After All. The Secret Movie also reveals that just because Final Fantasy characters are getting downplayed, that doesn't mean other Square Enix properties are off-limits, as Sora seemingly finds himself in a world like the one from The World Ends With You.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Organization XIII, to varying degrees. With some of them, like Luxord and Saix, it's acceptable that the heroes may show a degree of empathy and sadness about their deaths. But for others it's hard to believe that the story even tries to paint their deaths in a tragic light. Special mentions go to...
  • Ansem, the Seeker of Darkness. His final scene has him convey sadness that despite having tried to fight his fate by searching for the whereabouts of Subject X, he gave up hope of achieving his goals when his hostage, Ansem the Wise, was rescued from him and he learned that both Vexen and Demyx betrayed the Organization. But in all that time we're never told what he'd wish to do to Subject X that would allow him to cheat fate, we never expressed any sign that he cared for the girl, and she'd been one of the young residents of Radiant Garden he'd coldly locked up and performed experiments on in Hollow Bastion, even marking her as a special research subject. Moreover, Riku expresses some compassion for Ansem, saying he's going to miss him, and Ansem likewise regards Riku as a Worthy Opponent, despite every previous interaction between Ansem and Riku consisting of Ansem sadistically using, exploiting, tormenting, and inflicting agony upon Riku, making it impossible to buy that Riku would have any positive feelings towards the man who'd repeatedly made him suffer so much in the past.
  • Xemnas. The game tries to rerail his portrayal as the Tragic Villian he was portrayed as in Kingdom Hearts II. However, the task is impossible after Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] established that Xemnas knew Nobodies could grow hearts and willfully lied to the Organization in order to further Xehanort’s plans. So to have Xemnas suddenly feel regret and loneliness comes across more as a Karmic Death than the Alas Poor Villan moment the game tries to paint it out to be, especially considering that this moment comes right after he'd sadistically tormented Roxas, Xion, and Axel, and kidnapped Kairi just to provoke the Guardians of Light into following along with Master Xehanort's plan. Sora’s sympathy gets even more bizarre when you consider how angry he was at Xemnas following The Reveal in DDD and how he shows no sympathy for Xigbar, who, as far as Sora is aware, is guilty of the exact same crimes as Xemnas.
  • Master Xehanort. The ending reveals he really was a Knight Templar after all, believing that because human hearts are almost always vulnerable to darkness, they are responsible for the realm of light being too full of darkness, and he thought the only way to restore balance was to use Kingdom Hearts to purge the universe and start it all over, and he will become the worlds' leader to ensure balance. Even though ReMind expands upon this and successfully makes Xehanort's goal make more sense with how this characterization comes out of nowhere after you defeat him pre-DLC, that still doesn't justify him betraying and murdering his best friend Master Eraqus, as well as him ruining the lives of Eraqus' pupils & the other main characters, and being the main cause of everything bad that has happened to the worlds regarding his heartless and his nobody while continously acting like a Card-Carrying Villain who thoroughly enjoyed bringing all that suffering upon others, all of which he doesn't express even the slightest bit of regret for, let alone apologize for everything he's done to Sora and his friends, makes Xehanort not worthy of being forgiven or redeemed for his actions in the eyes of many fans and find it impossible to fathom why Eraqus would forgive him after everything he's done.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • All of the worlds have exceptional detail in 3D. This is shown especially well in Hercules' world, which was originally a 2D film.
  • The in-game graphics of Toy Story's world are almost indistinguishable from the movies. They even nailed the design of Andy's room and the entire neighborhood block! To really hammer the point, even Pixar staff members were shocked at how great the graphics looked! That's the power of Unreal Engine 4 for ya!
  • The Monsters, Inc. world has probably the most ambitious design yet, as not only do they recreate the inside of the factory, but the entire outside of the factory as well!
  • The Tangled world has realistic water, something that even great 3D animators have trouble animating. And they nailed it.
  • Also from the Tangled world, Rapunzel’s hair. The development team apparently spent three years making sure the hair worked in the game's engine, and it really pays off.
  • The graphics for the Pirates of the Caribbean world are the most phenomenal-looking of all. They deliberately made the graphics look gritty and realistic so it looks like Sora, Donald and Goofy stepped into the live-action movies. A far cry from the attempt that Kingdom Hearts II made. On top of that, apparently, the graphics for that level weren't even completely finished yet!
  • The "Let it Go" scene is a near frame-by-frame recreation of the scene in the film. Not only did they nail the shots accurately, but they also replicated the dust particles and the mountain design.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • Critical Mode has been a series standard since Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix. However, for some reason, the mode was removed for the initial release of the game. Fans were not pleased, since they feel that even Proud Mode (the highest difficulty level in the base game) is too easy. Then, Square Enix released a free update, which includes Critical Mode, to many fans' pleasure. And sure enough, Critical Mode is the same challenging and difficult mode it always is.
  • ReMind, despite being a paid expansion for the base game, helped turn around a lot of opinions on the game. The DLC addresses numerous complaints with the base game, such as patching up glaring Plot Holes in the final arc, adding new playable characters with wholly unique and exciting playstyles, making Scala ad Caelum playable, and bringing back the Final Fantasy characters. The added combo modifiers and the return of the Oathkeeper/Oblivion Keyblades (which are free, no less) also brought back the quick and snappy gameplay that some fans felt were missing from the base game, and Limitcut introduces some of the most challenging yet satisfying fights in the series, with the secret boss being compared with the likes of Lingering Will in terms of difficulty. It gave a lot of hope for the fans that the Osaka team, who have been looked down upon for years due to their previous attempts being highly experimental and having shoddy balance and flow, is learning from their mistakes and is truly capable of producing a stellar Kingdom Hearts game.
• The Woobie: This game turns Kairi into one because of all the horrible crap that happens to her in its story. After all the terrible things that happened to both her and her friends in the previous games, all she wanted was to become stronger to help her friends in their time of need and to prove herself. She spends almost the entire game training to become stronger to help Sora...only to get killed at the Keyblade Graveyard along with the rest of her friends by the Heartless tornado. And later, she gets kidnapped and has her body destroyed by Xehanort to "motivate" Sora. And then, at the end of the game, to make it all worse, one of her best friends (and possible love interest) sacrifices himself for her sake. At this point, it's safe to say that the universe really has it in for the poor girl.
• Woolseyism:
  • The trophy/achievement called "Ace Pilot" in Japanese was renamed "Thermosphere" in English. While the former is entirely generic, the latter is the name of the Schwarzgeist's boss theme.
  • In the Dark World, Mickey tells Riku that Aqua is "like Sora", referring to her strong heart, only to hastily clarify what he means when Riku reacts in shock. In the Japanese version, the way he phrases it sounds more like "Aqua looks like Sora", so Riku's horrified reaction comes across as him being surprised that she looks like Sora. The English dub has Riku instead interpret it as Aqua being just as impulsive as Sora.
  • Meeting Kairi after saving the other Guardians, in the Japanese version, Sora tells Kairi that she's strong, which causes her to look away flustered. This was not going to blow over well with Western audiences due to the line being directed at Kairi and what classifies as a "strong female character" tends to vary from person to person. The dub changed it to Sora telling Kairi that he feels stronger with her and it still fits the situation.

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